The Glass Circle Journal No.6

The

Glass Circle
Number 6

The Glass Circle

THE GLASS CIRCLE

CONTENTS

President
Robert J. Charleston

Vice
–
Presidents

Dr Donald B. Harden

Paul Perrot

G. Hugh Tab

Committee
Wendy Evans
Dr H. Jonathan Kersley

Barbara Morris

Anne Towse

Dr David C. Watts

Cyril Weeden

Honorary Secretary

Janet Benson

Honorary Treasurer

Tim Udall

Editorial Sub
–
Committee

Janet Benson

Robert J. Charleston

Wendy Evans

Raymond Slack

Cyril Weeden

Advertisement Manager

John S.M. Scott
The Glass Circle: a personal memoir

Page

by
Robert J. Charleston

The elements of glass collecting
by
John M. Bacon

Glass imitating rock crystal and precious stones –
16th and 17th century wheel engraving and gold

ruby glass

by
Professor Dr. Franz-Adrian Dreier

William and Thomas Beilby as drawing masters

by
Robert J. Charleston

The French connection: the decorative glass of

James A. Jobling and Co. of Sunderland during
the 1930s

by
Kate Crowe

The Windmills: a notable family of glassmakers
by
Brian Moody

Joseph Locke and his three careers in England
and America
by
Juliette K. Rakow

and
Dr. Leonard S. Rakow

The Whittington Loving Cup
by
Peter Dreiser

THE GLASS CIRCLE: A PERSONAL MEMOIR

by Robert J. Charleston

The history of the Glass Circle, founded as ‘The Circle
of Glass Collectors’ on 27 May, 1937, has been recorded

elsewhere by those who knew it from its inception — first
by the late Colonel E.E.B. Mackintosh, who furnished
most of the relevant details in a memorandum published

in mimeograph form (as was then the Circle’s style) in

1947, after ten years of its existence; and latterly by Miss
Katharine Worsley, our former Honorary Secretary for

23 years, in her excellent Introduction, with Mr. P.H.
Whatmoor, to the catalogue of the Circle’s
Strange and

Rare
Exhibition, held in our 50th Anniversary year.

Readers should seek there for the main facts of the

Circle’s history.
I came on the scene in the inauspicious year of 1947,

one of the coldest winters in living memory. I recollect

sitting on a settee in our Richmond flat, with a rug

wrapped round my knees, translating from the German
the text of F. Neuburg’s
Glass in Antiquity,
when we

received a visit from Mr. Bacon to take tea with us. He

had, I believe, been alerted to our existence by W.A.

Thorpe, with whom I had been in touch as a result of my
interest in Islamic glass. I was readily prevailed upon to

allow my name to go forward for membership, although

subsequently I became somewhat alarmed by the
grandeur of those whom I encountered at a meeting held

(to the best of my recollection) in the London house of
Major and
Mrs.
W.H. Riley-Smith. The era of dinner-

jackets had not quite passed away, and I felt a minnow
among the tritons in an alarmingly grand pond. I thought
twice before screwing up courage to attend further

meetings, and it was some years before I dared attempt

a Summer Outing. W.A. Thorpe, however, was

encouraging and, after my translation to the Victoria and

Albert Museum as a junior Assistant Keeper in 1948,

running into me in the old Ironwork Gallery, he

flabbergasted me with the suggestion that I might read a

paper. Since I knew little about anything other than

Islamic glass, I inevitably chose this as my subject (`The

Islamic Contribution to the Arts of Glass’, Paper 91), and

performed at Mrs. William King’s house in Thurloe

Square in March, 1949, not a little daunted by finding in
my audience Mr. Basil Gray, of the British Museum’s

Oriental Department, and then further unnerved by the

late A.J.B. Kiddell, who produced for my identification

a fragment of 14th century enamelled Syrian glass
palpably overpainted with a modern human face.
My duties in the Department of Ceramics at the V. and

A. soon taught me that there was a lot of glass in the
world outside the Roman and Islamic fields. The claims

of English glass pressed inexorably on my attention, for

at least half of all glasses brought to the Department for
opinion were English. Apart from grappling with domed

folded feet and double-series opaque-twists, I was readily
tempted into more specialist fields and my second paper
to the Circle was ‘Michael Edkins and the Problems of

English Enamelled Glass’ (No.96, December, 1950), the

first of a number devoted to English themes.

The paper on Islamic glass formed a prelude to W.A.

Thorpe’s avowed programme of widening the interests of

the Circle, and was followed in quick succession by
‘Syrian glass workers in Roman Times’ by our Hon.

Vice-President, Dr. D.B. Harden, and ‘A Newcastle

Glass Blower in 18th century Norway’ by our member
Dr. Ada Polak, both happily still with us; and by two
papers on glass in Belgium by the late Raymond

Chambon and Madame G. Faider-Feytmans. By way of
contrast, of the first ninety papers read to the Circle, only

one (Viva King’s ‘Verre de Nevers’) was on a topic not

strictly English.

Changing economic circumstances at large, and a deter-

mination by the Committee to keep expenses (and

thereby subscriptions) low, have led over the years to

subtle changes in the habits of the Circle. Hand-written

invitations (in the calligraphy of our Membership

Secretary, Mrs. Neville White) gave way to mimeo-
graphed notices, and then monthly circulars to quarterly.
Venues which became too expensive were changed for
those which were cheaper, preferably free. Single hosts at
meetings were replaced by co-hosts with strictly limited

liability, which made for economy without in the least
impairing conviviality. The rule against alcoholic
refreshments survived, perhaps for the same good reason.

These changes seem not in the least to have limited the

appeal of the Circle. The membership of a hundred or so
with which it entered the post-War period, swelled to 323

by 1980, to remain more or less at this level ever since.

Many were overseas members, and to keep this scattered
membership in touch, a mimeographed
Newsletter
was

introduced in March, 1977, and has been sustained ever

since by the energies of Dr. David Watts and his helpers.
This also served to fill the gaps left by the decision some
five years earlier that the more important communications

to monthly Circle meetings should be perpetuated in

printed rather than mimeographed form. We had saved

up, and finally in 1972 produced the first volume of
The

Glass Circle,
a slim offering of 64 pages with a beautiful

glossy blue cover (design by Joan Charleston), containing

four original papers and the reprint of a fifth by W.A.

Thorpe (Paper 89). Appetite grew with what it fed on and

Vol.2 (1978) contained seven original papers on 84 pages

and — an addition big with economic potential — four
advertisements. By 1986 Vol.5 contained seven papers on
99 pages and thirteen advertisements. Illustrations had
multiplied from 48 in 1972 to 114 in 1986. Our Honorary

Treasurers (Philip Whatmoor and Tim Udall) managed

these prodigies with only modest rises in subscription,

much aided by the efforts of John Smith and then John

Scott in whipping up advertisement revenue.

Further post-War innovations included three

Exhibitions. The first, the brain-child of Miss Worsley,

celebrated the Circle’s quarter-century (1962) and was

held at the Victoria and Albert Museum. It consisted of

members’ own glasses from Roman to modern times,

concentrating mainly on English 17th and 18th century

glasses, and including a Verzelini and four sealed

Ravenscrofts. The
Catalogue
of 383 items with 24 Plates

costs £1.00 and — is still available! The Circle was also

heavily involved in the V. & A.’s Exhibition of English

Glass arranged to celebrate the International Commission

on Glass conference held in London in July, 1968.
Twenty-six members provided 204 of the 282 exhibits. In

1987, the fiftieth anniversary and
annus mirabilis
of the

Circle, the Exhibition
Strange and Rare,
shown first in Dudley

and thereafter in St. Helens, comprised 262 items chosen for

their diversity as well as their quality. It needs no further

description, for the memory of it is fresh in our minds.
So the Circle enters its second half-century with

considerable achievements to its credit. It is sometimes

surprising to reflect that it is still possible, year after year,
to find seven speakers with new and worthwhile

information to impart. May ‘the line stretch out to the

crack of doom’!

No. 2

16th December,
1937.

Thy
.71E11
1
17.
1
5 Cl GLASS COILLF”TDO

John
M. Bacon

After enumerating the
various

groups
into which glasses are

classified,

the lecturer drew
attention
to the desirability of making careful search in

“Junk
Shops” and

unexpected
places for specimens of the eo-callei

Anglo-Tanatian

pieces,
decorated with prunta, chain.eJork, pinched work, wriggled work anf

endrconing, dating from about 1680.
No less than six pieces in the leotursea

pcsseesion had been found within
the last

twelve
months at prices, to the finder,

bsteeen 1/6 and 13/-.

These
pieces have been attested by the Experts. One of

these, a Flask with pinched work along the edges and chain work and
S.D.W.

On
the

body
is
now being shown at Burlington House at the Fahibition of 17th Century

Art in Europe.

The Lecturer, after reference to other hypes of drinking glasses, went

on to speak of
the three

groups into which the Jacobite glasses could be

classified.

(a)
Those prior to the rising of 1745.

(b)
Those made and engraved or cut and engraved after the rising,

bearing the substituted signs in place of the rose and, in the

case of the cut-stems, the secret rose up to 1770.

when the danger was past and the cause considered hopeless.

Reverting to (a). the Lecturer said “On these glasses are found the

Stuart rose of six, seven or eight petals engraved together with one or two buds,

the leaves, the butterfly, star, oakleaf, thistle, the pass words and
mottoes of

Fiat, Redeat, Redi (not Redii as Mr. Francis
suggests, as
this would give the

glass a later significance) and many others. The word ‘Fiat’ was the pass-

word of the Cycle Club established June 10th 1710. The stems of these glasses
mentioned above are of the types known before
1745,

viz plain-stems or the ordinary

air twist stems, either drawn, with trumpet or bell-bowls, or three-piece glasses
with knops, but the height of the glass indicates that they are of pre-excise
manufacture. The reference to excise is the tax of

odd per ton which was

placed upon all materials for making glass after
1745;
after this date the metal

had to be sparingly spread out.

(b) The Second period. After the
rising
it would have been dangerous

for a Jacobite to have been discovered by King George II’s troopers with a so-

called Rose-glees in his possession, and it became necessary to adopt other

apparently less incriminating symbols to express loyalty to the cause. Co after
1745 we find the bowls engraved with Jeanine (indicating James) Honeysuckle

(Henry) Passion-flower (Principes), or the Carnation (Charles Ldward).

The

butterfly is there as on some of the earlier rose classes and, in one case, the

Vaughan crest, a baby’s head with a snake around its neck, appears on a cut-stem
glass.

On closer inspection of
this
glass
it will be seen that a
wig
has been

engraved upon the head making it a camouflaged portrait of Prince Charlie.

Two of these glances came up from Herefordshire
in 1927

and five more

have recently been found
in Ireland, also in a
branch of the Vaughan family.

These and similar cut-stem glasses are probably the work of either Jerome Johnson
or TOomae Betts. The latter
is known
to have cut glass “for the nobility” in

his new workshop at “Charring” Cross, according to the information of a direct

descendant of his alive today.

“Charring” Cross is so spelt upon Thomas Betts’

Trade
Card, issued in 1743,
showing
the Royal Arms upon the sign and called

“Ye Kings Arm Glass Shop”, wherein he made his traitorous glasses. Thomas Betts
can be traced back as a glee::: cutter to 1734.

Now those cut-stem glasses, whether they have the carnation engraved

upon the bowl, or have an unengraved bowl, all have deeply incised cutting, some-

times called “sprig-cutting”, at the base of the bowl which, when looked down into,

Fives a perfect representation of the six-petalled rose.

In some cases the foot

is rut as well to resemble the roeu in outline.

– 2 –

Also in this second period (b) we find the smaller, shorter glasses

with a congested eir-twist, which must have been difficult to make and which was

the product of the poet-excjse period. The commoncenee cure for overcoming this

difficulty was that insteed of putting mery small bubbles in the knob of a glass
to be eventually clewn out into a rod while mahiug drawn glasses or 3-piece

glaaees, the oi
–
Ale..er inreres trio larger bebblee, not round, but flat – not

the shape of a pea, but of a bean – into tbes knob. The pea shape only
produced a steing of

e.s it were, along which the only reflection was a pin-

stripe. But the bean shape produced a taps, sometines thick, sometimes thin,
but flat to catch the licht and reflecting a broad streak of air; so fewer and

larger and flatter bubbles became the fashion for making the air-twist stems,
now called “Mercurial” twist-stems, which assumed so many pretty complexities

till about 1760. It
wes
over these latter stems or the cut-stems that the later

emblems of the Jacobite neriod (b), referred to above, appear.

with stems of the opaque white and of the nixed-twist and also with coloured stems –

and the cut-stems of the Waterford (founded 1783) period. The danger of a further

rising being now considered past, the emblem of the rose of the first period begins

to reappear boldly upon bowls. Even portraits in enamel are found on the glasses
of Newcastle with opaque twist stems enamelled by the Beilby’s in this later

period. Among the notable glasses of George III’s time is a set of three,

engraved with the words of a long Jacobite toast divided up between them, upon

tall bell-bowls above blue and white spiral stems. These are in a private

collection at Brighton.

With regard to the base of the bowls of Jacobite glasses of the

Waterford and contemporary factories, the sprig cutting is replaced by ordinary

sliced cutting.

In another Jacobite glass of circa
1775,
the six-petalled rose appears

in conjunction with the bud and only four leaves instead of five, the missing leaf
referring probably to Henry, the Cardinal. The stem of this glass is an opaque

white twist with a swelling knop. On the reverse of the bowl is a bee, the

crest of the Stewarts of Balcaskie.

It is possible that some of the earlier-made larger pre-excise

glasses were engraved after
1745,
but it is generally conceded that a good

engraved glass is one engraved shortly after its manufacture.

This somewhat unorthodox grouping of the Jacobite glasses into three

categories may be new to some collectors, but I would ask advanced students and

collectors to probe the matter further in the direction above-indicated.

This is also a considered attempt to account for the appearance of

early Jacobite emblems being found on the later types of stem.

The above is a facsimile of the first Paper read to The Circle of

Glass Collectors by its founder, and subsequently circulated to the

members.

GLASS IMITATING ROCK CRYSTAL AND

PRECIOUS STONES — 16th and 17th CENTURY

WHEEL ENGRAVING AND GOLD RUBY GLASS

by Professor Dr. Franz-Adrian Dreier

A
Paper read on the occasion of the Glass Circle Golden Jubilee, 19 November,

1987

The beginning of glass collecting may be seen in some

examples preserved in the treasuries of medieval

cathedrals and in some secular collections like those of the
Duke of Berry or Philippe of Burgundy. The first

collectors, however, who showed a particular interest in

glass were Cosimo I Medici in Florence, the Archduke
Ferdinand II of Tirol in Ambras Castle, near Innsbruck,

and the Landgrave William IV of Hesse-Kassel. They
were contemporaries and not only collectors of glass but
producers who founded glasshouses for their own require-

ments and amusement, with the help of glassmakers from

Murano. The Venetian glass industry had kept a

dominating position ever since the so-called `cristallo’ or

`cristallino’ was developed, shortly after 1450.

At the end of the 16th century a good colourless metal

was invented in Bohemia. This so-called ‘Weissglas’
(white glass) caused a revolution in glass decorating in
Central Europe. Up to that time enamelling or painting

with unfired colours, gilding and cutting with the

diamond point were known. Now the ground was laid for

a technique which till then had been practised only in the

workshops of the stone cutters — engraving with the

wheel. The somewhat brittle metal of potash-lime glass,
to which the ‘Weissglas’ belonged, presents a better

working surface to the wheel engraver than the soda-lime
glass of the Venetians. Engraving implies `Tiefschnitt’, as

the Germans called it, or ‘intaglio’ as it is called in Italy.

It is the `Tiefschnite which was practised first. It began

in the Courts of William V of Bavaria in Munich and of
the Emperor Rudolph in Prague. About 80 years had

passed before a new variant of the technique was

introduced in the workshops of the glass-engravers and

-cutters, the so-called ‘Hochschnite, which corresponds
with cameo-cutting.

One centre of this technique was Kynast Castle, in

Silesia, where the Count Christoph Leopold von

Schaffgottsch was making efforts to improve the

industries on his estates. Kassel too must be mentioned,
where the Landgrave Carl tried to advance the arts and

crafts, together with Potsdam and Berlin, where the

Great Elector and his successor, the Elector Frederik III
of Brandenburg and first King in Prussia, did the same,
inspired by the ideas of Colbert. A good crystal is the

basis of a good coloured glass. While continually
improving the crystal, the glassmakers also experimented

with new sorts of coloured glass. The most exciting

invention in that field was undoubtedly that of gold-ruby

glass. Glass-cutting and -engraving as well as gold-ruby

glass exemplify the same phenomenon — glass in

competition with rock cystal and precious stones.
At the beginning of the history of wheel-engraving we

find Caspar Lehmann, who was born in the north

German city of Ulzen on the Liineburg Heath, and who
died in 1622 in Prague. In 1586 Lehmann left his home
for Munich, where he spent a certain amount of time.

From a letter written by Lehmann to Duke Maximilian

of Bavaria, we know that he learned wheel-engraving on

stone and glass in Munich.
Lehmann arrived in Prague in 1588. In 1601 Emperor

Rudolph II appointed him ‘Imperial Chamberlain’

(Kaiserlicher Kammerdiener) and ‘Court Lapidary’

(Kammeredelsteinschleifer). In 1612 the Emperor

Mathias raised Lehmann to the nobility, granting him the
tide `zu Lowenwalde. Three years before, in 1609, the
Emperor Rudolph had granted him the famous privilege

for having invented glass-engraving. The text was handed

down to posterity by Joachim von Sandrart, the German

Vasari, in his work
Teutsche Akademie (`
German

Academy’). Was Lehmann the first to engrave glass with
the wheel or not? The Emperor Rudolph certainly had

some reason to favour him when he fell into disgrace for
a while owing to Court intrigues, and worked in Dresden

(1606 to 1608).
The well-known
beaker

(figure 1) made for the

Emperor’s Chancellor Sigismund von Losenstein and his

wife Susanna von Rogendorf gives us the key to
Lehmann’s
oeuvre.
The beaker, which is preserved in the

National Gallery in Prague, is signed and dated 1605.

The illustration shows the side with the allegorical figure

of LIBERALITAS. The reverse sides show NOBILITAS
and POTESTAS. The rim of the foot is decorated with

swags of fruit, a popular motif at that time, in
combination with festoons and garlands. The three

allegories are not the creation of Lehmann’s fantasy. He

took them from a copperplate engraving by Aegidius

Sadeler dated 1597. On the right is LIBERALITAS.
Lehmann added only the flowers and the butterflies. In

the same way, the architectural elements are borrowed

from the Sadeler engraving. Sadder for his part
reproduced a painting by Jan van der Straet.

The angel on the right of the panel in figure 2, in the

Bavarian National Museum, is related to the
LIBERALITAS of the signed beaker in Prague. This panel

and the following one, both with a choir of angels, are
mentioned in an inventory which was made in 1770 and

may have been drawn up following an older one. The

compiler of the inventory notes that the panels were made

by a certain Johann Schwanhardt of Heldburg, coming
from Henneberg. The father of Lehmann’s most gifted

pupil, Georg Schwanhardt, was a certain Johan

Schwanhardt, who indeed came from Heldburg, as

Joachim von Sandrart notes in his biography of Georg

Schwanhardt. However, Johann Schwanhardt was a

joiner who also made musket-butts. In about 1646, much

later than the period when the two panels were probably
made, another Johann Schwanhardt is mentioned in a

letter written by a member of
a
well-known Nuremberg

family, Lucas Friedrich Behaim. Behaim says in his letter

that he ordered engraved glasses by Johann Schwanhardt

for his son, who was living in the Netherlands. Georg

Schwanhardt, whose
oeuvre
we shall become acquainted

with later, was still alive. He died in 1667. That is the

reason why Erich Meyer-Heisig, in his book on glass-

engraving in Nuremberg, believed that there had only

been a confusion of names and attributed the panels to

Georg Schwanhardt. However, to connect the two

Munich angel-choir panels with his activity as a glass

engraver is absolutely impossible. Granted, a comparison

of the angel at the right with the
LIBERALITAS

cannot be

used as the only basis for attributing the panel to

Lehmann. There are some other circumstances, however,

that help to support the hypothesis that it was Lehmann’s

work. The style of the figures is like that of Friedrich

Sustris, a painter who died in Munich, the place of
Lehmann’s apprenticeship. Paintings by Christoph

Schwarz, who also died in Munich in 1592, also furnish

comparisons. It was Rainer RUckert, in his catalogue of

the glasses in the Bavarian National Museum, who
attributed the panels to Caspar Lehmann. Nobody took

the note in the inventory of 1770 seriously. If we suppose

that the glass-engraver Johann Schwanhardt was about

80 years old in 1646, he could have engraved the panels
as a young man. But nothing is known of his work.

Was Lehmann really the first person to engrave glass?

What happened in Munich, where the famous Saracchi

and Fontana families from Milan worked? Was it he who

transported engraving from rock crystal to glass? If not,

who could have been Lehmann’s teacher? In this context,

we may find a certain significance in the engraving of a

shrine, the so-called `Miinchner
Heiltumskasten’,
a

reliquary in the so-called ‘Rich Chapel’ (Reiche Kapelle)

in Munich. The engravings are on glass, not rock crystal.
In the centre we see Christ on the cross, on his right Mary

and on his left John. The cartouche is flanked by angels.

Beyond and below are the four Evangelists and six angels
holding the instruments of the Passion. Cherubs and

ornamental designs are engraved in the remaining fields.
A comparison may usefully be made between the

panels of the ‘Heiltumskasten’ and the two panels in the

Bavarian National Museum. A certain similarity between
the angel of the ‘Heiltumskasten’ (figure 3) and the angels

of the two panels cannot be denied. Nevertheless, there

are differences. The musculature of the arms and legs of

the figures of the ‘Heiltumskasten’ are indicated in great

detail. The legs and arms of the figures on the two panels

with the choir of angels are round, smooth and soft-

skinned. Their hair and physiognomy are comparatively

stylized. The faces of the ‘Heiltumskasten’ angels seem
more alive. The hair was given a note of expressionism by

the long locks and plaits, an impression intensified by the

starchy folds of the drapery. The artist of the

‘Heiltumskasten’ is not the artist of the two panels. He is

more gifted. But the general relationship of the panels

with the choirs of angels to those of the ‘Heiltumskasten’

suggests that their master knew his work.
Let us for a moment accept the assumption that the

master of the ‘Heiltumskasten’ was the teacher of Caspar
Lehmann. There is a person mentioned in the documents

who, as Robert Schmidt suggested, could have filled this
role — his friend and senior Zacharias Peltzer. We know

that the two friends shared lodgings, and that later on
Lehmann made it possible for Peltzer to follow him to
Prague.
There is yet another artist who, from what we know of

him, may be considered as a candidate for the master of

the ‘Heiltumskasten’. His name is Valentin Drausch. He

went from Strasbourg to Munich. It is said his skill

improved so greatly while working for Duke Wilhelm V,
that not only the Duke of Bavaria, but also the Elector

Christian I of Saxony and the Emperor Rudolph II in
Prague tried to lure him to their courts. Nevertheless, it
has not yet been possible to identify by signature or

documentary evidence of work by Valentin Drausch.
There are three panels attributed to Lehmann in the

Victoria & Albert Museum. The
Perseus and Andromeda

figure 4 is one of them. With its monograms ‘C’ for

Christian II, Elector of Saxony, and ‘H’ for his consort,
Hedwig of Denmark, it provides a key to the attribution
to Caspar Lehmann of a series of panels which were sold
by auction at Christie’s last year, and may form one

group with them coming from the same source. We learn
from the catalogue that the panels were originally

mounted in a single leaded frame of mid-19th century

date.
A panel now in the Corning Museum of Glass in

Corning (figure 5) shows a woman seated on a globe
holding a sceptre in her right hand, and a lion to her left

offering her a sword. An eagle above places an imperial

crown upon her head, her right foot is set on a fallen
warrior who holds a broken sword and bearded head, a

lance placed between his legs. Two naked infants are in
the foreground.

We find a similar version of this allegory on the curved

interior of the cover of the so-called
`Weltallschale’,

‘bowl of the Universe’, in the Museum of Arts and Crafts

in West Berlin (figure 6). The idea of the bowl, which

symbolises a Holy Roman Empire with a geographical

extent greater than that of the Empire of Charles V, was

conceived by the Emperor Rudolph II in Prague, who
had good reason to dream that fantastic vision so long as

he was engaged to Isabella, daughter of Philip II of Spain.

This tradition was handed down to posterity in a letter –

lost during the second world war — which the Jewish

community of Halberstadt enclosed in the bowl when

dedicating this significant work of the goldsmith’s art to
Frederick, Elector of Brandenburg and King in Prussia,

in 1702, when taking the oath of allegiance.
Franz Kugler gives us the interpretation of the

allegorical scene in his
Description of the royal art and curiosity

cabinet (Konigliche Kunstkammer)
published in 1838: the

female figure symbolizes ‘Germania’, as he says, or
rather the Holy Roman Empire. The fallen warrior

personifies vanquished Rome and the two infants
Romulus and Remus. I have not yet mentioned,

however, that there is a difference between the scene on
the ‘Weltallschale’, which was obviously copied from an

older copper-plate engraving, and that of the panel. On

the panel the warrior is lying on a map of Holland and
Friesland. The details are not visible in the reproduction

in the publication. Olga Drahotova, who identified the

map and was kind enough to send me the manuscript of

a lecture on the subject given in Prague, refers absolutely
correctly — as it seems to me — to the negotiations which
took place in The Hague in the years 1607 and 1609 and

brought an armistice in the long war between Spain and
the Northern Provinces of the Netherlands. Mrs

Drahotova did not at the time know, however, of the
‘Weltallschale’, which was made eighteen years before

the Lehmann panel — in 1589 — by Jonas Silber, a

goldsmith living at that time in Nuremberg. So she

supposed the recumbent warrior to be the French King
Henri IV, who doubtless played an important part in the

background of the negotiations and was murdered in

1610. She also supposed the two infants to symbolize the
inheritance of the Dukes of Julich and the Countess of

Cleve claimed by the Elector of Saxony. He obtained
these two principalities in fief from the Emperor Rudolph

in 1610 and laid claim to them from that date onwards,

but without any success. I am convinced that the map

symbolises these events. The iconographic substance of
the figural scheme, however, did not change. Mrs

Drahotova does not insist on her original hypothesis,

which was undoubtedly seductive at first sight. Neverthe-
less,I should like to mention a further possibility of inter-

pretation still under discussion. If we accept that the

female figure forms an allegory of ‘Pax’ (`Peace’), the

fallen warrior could personify ‘Mars’ and the children

and the bearded head would symbolize the terror of war.

This version, however, although fitting in with the
allegory on the panel with the map would not correspond

with the iconographic system of the ‘Weltallschale’,

which represents the idea of an extensive new Roman
Empire based on the — historically justifiable — claim to

the political inheritance of the old Roman Empire.

The portrait of
Heinrich Julius of Brunswick
(figure 7), to

whom the ‘Weltallchale’ was probably given as a present

by the Emperor Rudolph, was engraved by Caspar
Lehmann. Heinrich Julius went to Prague in 1607. The

shy and distrustful Emperor bestowed so much
confidence in him that he appointed him `Kayserlicher
Romischer Mayestat Geheimen Rats bestallter oberster

Director’ .

(`General Director of the secret Council of

the Imperial Roman Majesty’). He was a gifted and
versatile man, not only well educated in law and

philosophy, but also the author of dramas in the style of

the ‘English comedians’ who were travelling through

Germany at that time (Thomas Sackville, John Spencer,

John Green, Ralph Reeve, Brown, Reynolds) and who
prepared the ground for a German theatre. Heinrich

Julius was bishop of Halberstadt for many years before he

succeeded his father Julius on the throne in 1589.
Accommodation of differences between Catholics and
Protestants was his special field in Prague. He may have
played a comparable part in Halberstadt in mediating

between the Christian population and the Jewish
community, which was in possession of the bowl in 1702.

We know that Heinrich Julius was oppressed by
tremendous debts as a consequence of his political

activities. I am convinced that Lehmann made the
portrait in Prague during the Duke’s stay, although he

must have copied it from a copper-plate engraving, and

this he could of course have done anywhere.
If my assumption proves right, the portrait must have

been made by Lehmann after his return from Dresden in
1608 and not later than 1613, the year Heinrich Julius

died in Prague.

A panel engraved with
Europa on the Bull
needs no

interpretation. The monogram is that of Christian II of

Saxony and his consort Hedwig, daughter of King
Frederik of Denmark. In the sale catalogue the panel is

dated ‘1606-1611’, the period between the marriage and

death of the Elector (Christian died on 23 June, 1611).
But the crown above the monogram is not an Elector’s

cap, but the crown of his Danish consort. So we must

suppose that the panel was engraved after Christian’s
death. The panel with
Perseus and Andromeda
in the V & A

(figure 4) gives us an example of how the heraldry of the
crowns was practised before 1611, the year of Hedwig’s
widowhood. The monograms are enclosed in shields,

each with the appropriate official head-covering, the
Elector’s hat and the consort’s crown. The sale catalogue
notes of another panel which shows Christian and his

consort as a naked pair that the ‘romantic subject’ on this
panel and on the following one would imply the existence

of a warm attachment between Christian II and his
wife…’ A panel with
Cupid leading two doves
towards a

nude child belongs to the same theme. The child may

symbolize the hope for a Crown Prince. It was, however,

not fulfilled. The successor of Christian II was his nephew

Johann Georg. I cannot deny that my interpretation of
the scene is contrary to the dating I proposed, because it

is hardly to be imagined that the panel was ordered by a

widow who had lost that very hope. Do the panels belong
to one set made at the same time? There are circumstances

which suggest the opposite.
A further panel in this series has the date ‘1620’ right

at the top, with a lion in a landscape which may refer to
the events leading up to the Thirty Years’ War. They

culminated in the total defeat of the Elector Palatine
Frederick V, whom the Bohemian Protestants had elected

to the throne of Bohemia. In the sale catalogue the lion

is supposed to be an allegory of
Fortitude,
referring to the

victory of the Habsburgs, but I incline to agree with Mrs.
Drahotova, who suggests that the lion is the lion of the
Palatinate. This growling lion is not represented in the
attitude of fortitude and victory but looks to me somewhat

frightened. The date ‘1620’ gives us a

terminus ante quern

non. I
am convinced it was not added later.

Lehmann’s return to Prague in 1608 or his death in

1622 may be the reason why the panel of figure 8 was
engaved by another hand, perhaps that of an engraver in
Dresden or that of Georg Schwanhardt, his most gift
pupil. The laurel motif was already a riddle for the

scholars of the beginning of the 18th century. Wilhelm
Ernst Tentzelius mentions in his
Saxonia Numismatica,

published in Frankfort, Leipzig and Gotha in 1714, that

many learned people of his time had puzzled their brains

about the figure under the Elector’s hat. It represents,

however, nothing but the number ‘8’. The ‘C’ of

Christian’s name is the third letter in the alphabet and the
‘H’ of Hedwig’s name the eighth letter. ‘These two

ciphers’ — (Tentzelius notes) ‘indicate either Christian
and Hedwig or Hedwig in her widowed state’. Hedwig
had found so much pleasure in this invention that she also

used the ‘3’ and the ‘8’ in the genealogical books partly

preserved in the Princely Library in Gotha and partly by

the court preacher Gleichen in Dresden. Above the ‘8’ we

see the Electoral cap. It belongs to the ‘8’ and does not

seem to contradict what I have said about the dating of
the panel if we interpret this emblematic scene in a

memorial sense. The three lions are those of the coat-of-

arms of Denmark. They again show the little crown.
One of the panels in the V & A is engraved with a bear

which may symbolize Bavaria, a true ally of the Emperor,

and the date ‘1619’ (the year in which the Elector Palatine
Frederick V was proclaimed King of Bohemia). It shows

under the Elector of Saxony’s cap the ‘8’ with in this case

the ‘3’ in ligature.
Let us now turn for a short moment to Georg

Schwanhardt, Lehmann’s pupil, whose name I have
already mentioned several times. He was a young man
from Nuremberg. Lehmann bequeathed him his

privilege. However, when Schwanhardt went back to
Nuremberg after Lehmann died in 1622, he was not the

first person there to engrave glass. In 1613, eight years

before Schwanhardt arrived, a certain goldmsith named
Hans Wessler sought a privilege for glass-engraving in
Nuremberg. He was believed to have worked only with

the diamond-point until the panel of figure 9 suddenly

appeared.
Tomyris,
the Queen of the Massagetes, is in the

act of putting the head of the Persian King Cyrus into a
bag. It is signed ‘HW’ at the lower right hand corner.

The panel is now in the Corning Museum of Glass. The
broad humour of this terrible scene needs no comment.

The quality of the engraving, following a copperplate
print by Georg Pencz, is considerable. To return to

Georg Schwanhardt. Figure 10 shows a panel of the so-
called `Moskowiter Schrank’ (‘Muscovite casket’) –
preserved in the Schlossmuseum in Berlin until it was

destroyed in 1944 — and these give an example of how

Schwanhardt worked. He engraved his scenes with the
wheel, but the background was drawn with the diamond-
point, thus giving the illusion of depth and space. This is

a refined technique. Schwanhardt, incidentally, was the
first to polish parts of his engravings.
An engraving with a portrait of Georg Schwanhardt the

Elder executed by J.C. Sartorius is known. It is dated

‘1693’. Schwanhardt died in 1667. The engraving is no

doubt the reproduction of a lost painting. George
Schwanhardt the Elder had five children — two sons,

Heinrich and Georg the Younger, and three daughters,

Sophia, Susanna and Maria. They all engraved glass, as
also did the two daughters-in-law. The daughters

engraved flowers and foliage. A kind of division of labour

seems to have been organised in the workshop.
Georg Schwanhardt the Younger is said to have been

in bad health. Sandrart mentions a disease of the joints

which hindered him from improving his talent. Georg’s
brother, Heinrich, was a recognised glass artist, and
particularly gifted in drawing. This is why we cannot

ascribe to Henrich Schwanhardt a very charming, but
rather moderate, drawing discovered in the

Staatsbibliothek in Bamberg and published some years
ago by Klaus Pechstein. It must have been made by
Georg the Younger. We see Georg on the right and
Heinrich is depicted on the left. The verse may be

translated: ‘The Schwanhardts’ art . ..long may it

live… they give their portrait to you in gratitude’. (‘Der

Schwanhardt Kunst mog’ lange leben, Sic Dier Zum
Danck Ihr Bildnis geben’).
Beneath the verse we find the date: 16 January, 1672.

The drawing was made five years after the father died.
Heinrich is depicted at the age of 47 years and Georg at

32 years.
Skill in creating portraits on a curved surface may be

seen on a glass showing the
Emperor Leopold I,

son of

Ferdinand III, Emperor since 1658. It was he who
provoked the Hungarians with his vigorous attempts to

recatholicize the Protestant population. The Hungarian

rebellion caused the advance of the Turks to the walls of

Vienna. Later, in 1701, it was Ferdinand who began the

war of the Spanish succession.
There was a considerable number of gifted glass-

engravers working in Nuremberg in the second half of the

17th century. I should like to mention only the two most

significant: Hermann Schwinger and Johann Wolfgang
Schmidt. Hermann Schwinger, who can be documented

between 1640 and 1683, takes up again the art of fine

scene-engraving that appeared on the panels and vessels

engraved by Georg Schwanhardt the Elder. Schwinger is
unrivalled in his rendering of the illusion of atmosphere.
His tiny landscapes may appear to us like paintings of an

impressionist who set his work on glass (figure 11).

Schwinger likes the romantic charm of ruins and calm

waters with fishermen, surrounded by trees and bushes,

their outlines melting into the haze of remoteness.

Schwinger was not a pupil of Georg Schwanhardt. The
documents mention a certain Hans Stefan Schmidt as his
teacher. Schmidt was recognised as a man of considerable

gifts even during his lifetime. None of his works,
however, have been identified.
Johann Wolfgang Schmidt seems to have been a pupil

of Hermann Schwinger. His activity in Nuremberg can
be documented from 1676 to 1710. Schmidt has a special

liking for hunting scenes and fighting horsemen (figure

12). Some of his scenes seem to be inspired by events that

occurred during the siege of Vienna by the Turks.
Nuremberg plays a leading part in glass-engraving up

to the beginning of the 18th century. Nevertheless,

already during the last two decades of the previous
century, the invention of a better metal laid the ground
for a new development in glass-engraving at different

places. The artistic impulse came from Silesia. It was

Friedrich Winter, Castellan of Count Christoph Leopold

Schaffgottsch at Kynast Castle, who introduced a new
kind of glass–engraving, the famous `Hochschnite

( `relief-engraving’).
Friedrich Winter set up a water-powered cutting mill

near Hermsdorf after receiving a privilege from Count

Schaffgottsch. Figure 13 shows one of the best examples

of `Hochschnite by Friedrich Winter. It is the glass that
was in the first session of the Krug Collection Auction at
Sotheby’s in July, 1981. The goblet was bid in by a
German dealer for £85,000 (sterling). The bowl, in the
form of a cornucopia with basal volute, shows a relief of

symmetrical acanthus sprays inhabited by birds and

animals looking like boars, the latter motif not visible in
the illustration.
The two artists who were destined to raise the

technique of `Hochschnite to its highest pinnacle I

introduced to the Glass Circle in 1966. That is a long time

ago. So it may be permissible for me to deal with them

once more to round out the picture. I am speaking of

Christoph Labhardt and Franz Gondelach in Kassel.

Christoph Labhardt, from Steckborn in the Swiss

Canton Turgau, who since 1680 had been active in
Kassel in the hardstone-cutting mill founded by the
Landgrave Carl of Hesse-Cassel, worked not only in

stone but also in glass. The eminent skill with which

Labhardt mastered `Hochschnitt’ in glass is clear from a

beaker in Rosenborg Castle in Copenhagen, decorated

with heads of Roman Emperors.
Gondelach’s complete mastery of the human figure is

seen in a plaque of rock crystal depicting a family of fauns

(figure 14). From this imposing work by Franz

Gondelach, who was probably Labhardt’s pupil, we know

that he was not unwilling to use engravings as his

exemplars, this scene being copied from a print by Jan
Muller after a painting by Bartholornaus Spranger. The
motif of the faun’s family was favoured also by other

artists, as we can see from a relief by the ivory carver
Ignaz Elhafen in the Herzog Anton Ulrich Museum in

Brunswick.
An example of Hessian `Tiefschnite (`intaglio

engraving’) is the portrait of Maria Amalia Princess of
Kurland, consort of the Landgrave Carl on a goblet in the

Staatliche Kunstsammlungen, Kassel. The youthful look

of the princess may suggest a date for the goblet of about
1680. Gondelach was 17 years old at that time. I incline

to attribute the goblet to Labhardt. It shows the
Landgrave’s portrait on the reverse.
Franz Gondelach, a ‘sculptor in glass’, tried to push

the possibilities of cutting and engraving in his brittle and

refractory material to the utmost. This may be

demonstrated by a goblet in the Gemeentemuseum, The

Hague, given by Prince Wilhelm of Hesse-Cassel to the

St. George’s Guild in 1717. We see St. George astride a
prancing horse, spearing the dragon. The glass, like most

of the glasses by Gondelach, suffers from glass disease.

The stem and the knob show cherubs in the round.
Some of you may recognise a monumental medallion,

about 13.3 x 12.2in. in diameter, in the Staatliche
Kunstsammlungen, Cassel, which I showed to the Glass

Circle in 1966. It shows the bust of the Landgravine
Maria Amalia. The medallion was apparently pressed by
means of a steel mould. The model may have been carved

in wood by Franz Dobbermann, the wood-, amber- and

ivory-carver who worked for Landgrave Carl in Cassel.

Only Franz Gondelach, however, was skilful and gifted
enough to touch up the portrait with the wheel and

cutting instruments. Figure 15 shows one of four
medallions in Cassel, each of them with a philosopher’s
head in relief, executed partly in colourless and partly in

blue glass. The use of steel dies in the Altmunden glass-

house, where the glasses were produced for the Court, is

well documented. The busts were made before 1717 after
the pattern of an invention by Bernard Perrot in Orleans.

The practice of `Flochschnite was also transferred to

Berlin. In 1687, Martin Winter, born in Silesia, a brother

of Friedrich Winter, set up a cutting-mill in Berlin.
Already in 1683 he had employed his nephew, Gottfried
Spiller, one of the most significant artists in the history of

glass.
A signed rock crystal jug, formerly in the

Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen Collection, came into the

possession of Baron von Schroder in London in 1928. It

is not known where it is preserved now. Significant for the

attribution of glasses to Gottfried Spiller was also a beaker

with
Orpheus

in the Kunstgewerbemuseum (formerly

Schlossmuseum) in Berlin, because it is mentioned and
described in the
Description of the residences at Berlin and

Potsdam
which Friedrich Nicolay published in 1769. Very

similar in style to the subject-matter is a beaker with a
faun and a nymph from the collection of Dr Johannes

Jantzen, now in the Museum of Dusseldorf.

The goblet of figure 16 formerly in the Helfried Krug

Collection, and now in the Museum of Arts and Crafts in
West Berlin, gives us an impression of Gottfried Spiller’s
famous creations of cherubs. We meet them in various
mythological scenes, particularly in the train of the infant

Bacchus, playing musical instruments or skipping and

dancing.
Much of Gottfried Spiller’s engraving was executed on

red glass, and this may appropriately lead us on to one of
the most exciting chapters of glass history, the invention

of gold ruby glass.

Georg Agricola in his work
De natura fossilium

published

in 1546, mentions that it is possible to get a red colouring

by using gold under certain conditions. Giovanni Battista
Porta deals with the possibility of producing gold-ruby

glass in his
Magiae naturalis libri vikinti.
Andreas Libavius

takes up the idea in his
A lchemia,

and Antonio Neri gives

an instruction in his
Arte Vetraria
in 1612. Johann

Kunckel, however, declares Neri’s recipe to be ineffectual

and refers to his own composition of a frit, but asks his
readers for indulgence in that he is keeping it secret out

of respect for his sovereign, the Great Elector of
Brandenburg.

The frontispiece of the
Ars Vitraria Experimentalis
by

Johann Kunckel, first published in 1679, gives the

portrait of the author. Lucas von Liebenau von Wehrd

set the praise of this great man to verse:

`Knowledge, experience and judgement of all things –

now want to make this worthy man incomparable, –

and, Truth, which is the goal toward which his eyes are
flashing, already crowns with high nobility his name..

Johann Kunckel’. (The last two lines in German read:
`Und die Wahrheit die das Ziel wornach seine Augen

funckeln, — kront mit hohem Adel schon dessen Namen

Johann Kunckeln’).

Johann Kunckel was born in 1630 in Pion, Schleswig-

Holstein, He spent his early years in his father’s

glasshouse in Mitten, near Rendsburg. After finishing

his studies, he went to the Court of Duke Franz Karl of
Sachsen-Lauenburg in Bohemia, and then worked in

Dresden, where he was appointed ‘secret valet’ and

`Chymicus’, that is, analytical Chemist of the Elector of

Saxony’s secret laboratory. Kunckel was naturally given

the task of making gold, and he really was convinced that

he would succeed.
In 1678 we find Kunckel in Berlin. The great Elector

of Brandenburg, Friedrich Wilhelm II, entrusted him

with the direction of his glasshouse at Drewitz, near
Potsdam. In 1685 Kunckel was made proprietor of the

`Pfaueninsel’ (Peacock Island’), at that time, however,

called `Kaninenwerder’ (`Rabbit holm’). Here he set up

a small glasshouse to make experiments.
In 1688, after the death of the Great Elector, Kunckel

fell victim to intrigues. After having spent some time as

a mining advisor in Sweden, where he was knighted by
the King as ‘Johann Kunckel zu Lowenstern’, he

returned to Berlin, where he died in 1703.
Still today many people call gold-ruby glass `Kunckel

Glas’. Was it really Kunckel who invented this new red

glass? And if he didn’t, what did he do? Kunckel does not

claim in any of his books to be the inventor of gold-ruby
glass. In his posthumously published work
Laboratorium

Chymicum,
he challenges Dr. Cassius, the inventor of the

formula which laid the ground for the making of gold-

ruby glass. It was Cassius, who studied in Leyden and

later on lived in Hamburg, who discovered the

`praecipitatio Solis cum Jove’, a colloidal precipitation of

gold with tin. Kunckel improved the ‘modum

procedendi’, the practical method of annealing and

reheating for getting the glass truly red. The Duke of

Sachsen-Lauenburg, for instance, although in possession
of Cassius’ formula, was not able to produce gold-ruby
glass in his glasshouse at Juliusthal until Kunckel’s
disloyal glassmaster revealed the secret.

There was another glasshouse in Freising (Bavaria),

however, that is said to have produced gold-ruby glass as

early as 1677. But it may have produced only imitations

of precious stones, as Walter Spiegl suggests. Between

1689 and 1698, a certain Hans Christoph Fiedler
produced gold-ruby glass in Munich and a short time

before that for Count Nothaft of Wernburg at Runding

in the Bavarian Forest. Fiedler was supposed to be
Kunckel’s glassmaster and the man who sold the secret of

gold-ruby glass to the Duke of Sachsen-Lauenburg. He
was also possibly the one who revealed the secret to
Michael Muller in Winterberg. We know not only from

Muller that he produced gold-ruby glasses. Johann Anton

Landgraf, Miiller’s son-in-law, produced them in his

glasshouse at Klingenbrunn in Upper Austria. In an old

document, Bayreuth is mentioned as being a place where
gold ruby-glass was made. The name of the town,

however, seems to have been confused with Bavaria

(referring to the glasshouse in Munich) as was concluded

by Olga Drahotova.: she also is of the opinion that Fiedler

was Kunckel’s glassmaster.
The goblet of figure 17 in the Kunstgewerbemuseum in
West Berlin may have been made for King Friedrich

Wilhelm I of Prussia, the father of Frederick the Great,

because the reverse shows his devise ‘non Soli cedit’ (‘he

does not give way even to the sun’), and the Prussian

eagle, which is flying to the sun above this inscription
written in gold letters. The coat-of-arms is that of

Brandenburg-Prussia. The goblet is said to have been

discovered in Yorkshire and was later auctioned at

Sotheby’ s .
A class of covered facetted beakers in ruby glass

presents a problem. In most of the books about glass you

will find this very type of beaker attributed to Potsdam.
The shape does indeed look rather Potsdamish’, so does
the thick glass with its gleaming red. The same shape of
beaker, however, also appears in colourless transparent

glass enclosing ruby red spiral threads.

There are also goblets with these red spiral threads

(figure 18). No example of this type of decoration was

ever made in the Potsdam factory. Often the threads were
used for decorating the stems only, occasionally in

combination with threads of gold. This technique was
used by Johann Anton Landgraf, whom I mentioned

before. The technique, though confined to the stems, was
also introduced in the Dresden glasshouse near Ostra. In

the glasshouse of Mahlberg in the district of Gratzen in

Bohemia, ruby red spiral threads were used to decorate

stems as late as 1758. Then the secret of making gold-
ruby glass was lost for a while in Bohemia. No doubt the

red glasses, as well as the glasses with the red spiral

threads, are the products of a Bohemian glasshouse,

perhaps Michael MUller’s factory at Winterberg.
The excellent set of five vases in figure 19 differs totally

from all glasses, colourless or red, that can be attributed

with certainty to Potsdam. The set is unique, but

elements of glass with that typical vertical ribbing appear

often in various combinations with silver-gilt mounts

hallmarked by Augsburg goldsmiths, among them

Thobias Baur, whose mark is on the fine mount of this

set. Mounts with the hallmarks of masters working in

Nuremberg are also known. They often appear with

engraved ornament in the Nuremberg style. The

goldsmiths used to order the glass elements in assorted

lots and took them to be mounted in various

combinations as needed.

The eagle with the King’s crown, sceptre and imperial

orb does not in this case give a hint as to the person who
might have ordered the set. The symbols are stylised.

They could have been made for Augustus the Strong,

King of Poland from 1699, or for Frederick III, Elector

of Brandenburg, who became Frederick I, King in
Prussia, after 1701. Frederick is famous as the King who

in Konigsberg placed the crown on his head ‘by the grace

of himself’.

Finally, a little teapot in the Germanisches National-

museum, Nuremberg, can show us that not all red glass

from about 1700 is gold ruby glass. The red is a layer, a
process alleged in a document to be an invention of

Johann Friedrich Bottger for the glasshouse of Augustus
the Strong in the village of Ostra, near Dresden, before
he invented porcelain.

It is not easy to say why people devoted so much effort

to colouring glass by gold despite the fact that they had

long since been able to produce a good red glass by the

addition of copper-oxide. The production of gold-ruby

glass is more difficult than that of copper-ruby glass. The

gold-ruby glass must be annealed and then heated again

a second time before it becomes red. It was not easy to
regulate the temperature. Perhaps superstition, the belief

in the magical efficacy of gold, rather than aesthetic
motives, stimulated the desire for gold-ruby glass.

May I conclude by saying that the occasion of this talk

was provided by the fifty years’ commemorative

celebrations of the Glass Circle. May I say that it has been
a great privilege and a pleasure for me to speak to you.
I hope I was right in selecting some examples of glass as

a subject of the history of decorative art at its highest

level. It is one of those many subjects which Robert

Charleston has been engaged in since he began working
in the wide field of glass history, giving impulses to local

and to international research and stimulating younger
people. I’m one of them(!)
Let me express what I feel at this moment by a sentence

from the work of the American writer and philosopher
Ralph Waldo Emerson: ‘Of what shall a man be proud

if he is not proud of his friends’. Thank you.

Figure 1. Beaker,

colourless glass wheel-

engraved by Caspar

Lehmann. Signed and

dated 1605. Museum of

Arts and Crafts,

Prague.

Figure 2. Panel, rock-crystal
with wheel-

engraving attributed to Caspar Lehmann.

Munich; about 1586-88. Bayerisches
Nationalmuseum, Munich.

Figure 4. Panel,
Perseus and Andromeda,

colourless glass wheel-engraved by Caspar Lehmann

in Dresden, about 1610. Victoria and Albert

Museum.

Figure 3. Panel from a

casket (the `Miinchner

Heiltumskasten ),

colourless glass with
wheel-engraving, perhaps

by Zacharias Peltier or

Valentin Drausch in

Munich, about 1585.

Reiche Kapelle,

Munich.

Figure 6. `Weltallschale’, silver-gilt, by Jonas Silber, Nuremberg,

1589. Kunstgewerbe Museum, Berlin.

Figure 5. Panel, colourless glass with wheel-engraving

probably by Caspar Lehmann in Dresden, about 1610.
Corning Museum of Glass, Corning.

Figure 7. Panel,
Heinrich Julius of

Brunswick,
colourless glass with wheel-

engraving by Caspar Lehmann in Prague, about
1608-13. Dresden, Griines
Figure 8. Panel, colourless glass with wheel-engraving perhaps

by Georg Schwanhardt the Elder in Prague, after 1608.

Corning Museum of Glass, Corning.

Figure 10. Panel from the Moskowiter Schrank’, colourless

glass engraved with the wheel and diamond-point by Georg
Schwanhardt the Elder, Nuremberg, about 1650. Formerly

Schlossmuseum, Berlin (destroyed in the Second World War).

Figure 9. Panel,
Tomyris with the head of Cyrus,

colourless glass with wheel-engraving by Hans Weiner,
l

Nuremberg, about 1610-20. Signed with initials `1-1W’.

Corning Museum of Glass, Corning.

Figure 11 (right).
Goblet, colourless

glass wheel-engraved
by Hermann
Schwinger,

Nuremberg, about

1675-80.

Figure 12 (left).
Goblet, colourless

glass wheel-engraved

by Johann Wolfgang

Schmidt, Nuremberg,

about 1690-1700.

Figure 15. Plaque, blue glass, with the head of a philosopher,

press-moulded and touched up on the wheel. Altmiinden

glasshouse (Hesse), about 1710-16. Staatliche

Kunstsammlungen, Kassel.
Figure 16. Goblet, colourless glass

wheel-engraved by Gottfried Spiller,

Potsdarn/Berlin, about 1700.

Kunstgewerbe Museum, Berlin.

Figure 13. Goblet,

colourless glass cut and

engraved on the wheel
CHochschnitt’) by

Friedrich Winter,

Hermsdorf, about 1700.

Formerly Helfried Krug
Collection.

Figure 14. Plaque,

rock-crystal cut and

engraved on the wheel by
Franz Gondelach,

Cassel, early 18th
century. Formerly
Staatliche

Kunstsammlungen,
Kassel.

TWRiWaNt”

Figure 17 (Top left). Goblet, gold-ruby glass with gilt

decoration including the arms of Brandenburg/Prussia,

about 1720. Kunstgewerbemuseum, Berlin.

Figure 18 (Above). Two goblets, one of wheel-cut ruby

glass, the other with ruby and gold threads in the stern.
Bohemia, second quarter of 18th century. Museum of

Arts and Crafts, Prague.

Figure 19 (Left). Set of five vases, mould-blown gold-
ruby glass with silver-gilt mounts by Thobias
Baur
of

Augsburg. South German or Bohemian, early 18th

century.

WILLIAM AND THOMAS BEILBY

AS DRAWING MASTERS
by Robert J. Charleston

A Paper read to the Circle on 21 November, 1985

In any consideration of the Beilby family, one does well
to look back to the
Memoir
of Thomas Bewick, who knew

them intimately over a period of some seven years, the

duration of his apprenticeship. ‘The father of Mr (Ralph)
Beilby followed the business of a goldsmith and jeweller

in Durham, where he was greatly respected. He had
taken care to give all his family a good education. His

eldest son, Richard, had served his apprenticeship to a

diesinker, or seal engraver, in Birmingham. His second
son, William, had learned enamelling and painting in the

same place. The former of these had taught my master

seal-cutting, and the latter taught his brother Thomas
and Sister Mary enamelling and painting; and, in this

way, this most respectable and industrious family lived
together and maintained themselves .

Bewick adds

that his own master, Ralph, had ‘also assisted his brother

and sister in their constant employment of enamel

painting upon glass . . ‘ A little later in the same passage

he complains that he received little tuition from the
members of the family: ‘I was never a pupil to any

drawing master, and had not even a lesson from William

Beilby, or his brother Thomas, who, along with their

other profession, were also drawing masters .. .
‘

2
It is on

the brothers William and Thomas that this paper will

concentrate, and mainly in their capacity as drawing

masters. First, however, it is necessary to establish a

biographical framework for the two men, since this has

been in the main lacking, although Squadron Leader
Rush, in his book
The Ingenious Beings
(1973)

intermingled some fact with a good deal of inference

about the activities of the family.

William Beilby was the third son of William Beilby, the

silversmith and jeweller of Durham, and Mary
Bainbridge, daughter of a Durham alderman, who were

married there in September 1733.
3
William was born on

20 June, 1740, and by the time of Bewick’s apprenticeship

was the .eldest surviving son, his brother John dying in
1755 before the family move from Durham, and his
brother Richard in 1766.
4
Rush states that he was

educated at the grammar school in Durham City and was

admitted as a King’s scholar in 1751, but gives no source
for this information.
5
We owe to Francis Buckley the

notice of his apprenticeship `to John Hazeldine of

Birmingham, enameller’ on 3 July, 1755. This man is by

no means unknown. In the Birmingham
Directory
of 1767

he is recorded as Painter and Drawing Master, a
description repeated in
Slcetchley’s… Guide
in 1770 and in

several
Directories
of later date.
6
None of these show him

as an enameller, but enamelling was in its heyday in
Birmingham in the mid-1750s, whereas it had passed to
neighbouring Bilston and Wednesbury by 1767. (I have

been able to find nothing, incidentally, to justify Rush’s
assertion that William Beilby learned his craft at Bilston:

nor does there seem to be any warrant for the statement

that William Beilby returned to Newcastle (Gateshead) in

1760. His apprenticeship would normally have ended in

1762, and it is surely no coincidence that the first datable
glasses are of that year.
7

) In March of 1765 William

Beilby the silversmith died, and presumably after this

date William the son, now head of the family, ceased to

use the formula ‘Beilby Jnr. invenit et pinxit’ — although

it is just possible that Thomas might have used this form

of words to denote his status
vis-a-vis
William.

In 1767 the
NewcastleJournal
for 14 February carried the

following advertisement: ‘DRAWING. William Beilby
proposes teaching young ladies and gentlemen in the

several branches of the art of drawing, at his house in the
Close, Newcastle upon Tyne.’s It has been generally

assumed that the school carried on until 1778, in which
year the
Newcastle Journal
for 3 October carried the

advertisement: ‘Drawing Academy. Mr Beilby returns

thanks for favours received from his patrons during the

continuance of his drawing school, and desires to inform
them that he proposes an exhibition of the drawings and

paintings of his pupils at his house in Northumberland

Street, Newcastle.’s
The Newcastle Directory
for the same

year also records, under the heading ‘Drawing School’ –

‘Beilby, Wm., Northumberland Street’s. These notices

would seem to confirm the supposition of continuity.

There are, however, counter-indications. In the papers of

the Beilby/Bewick partnership preserved in the Laing Art

Gallery, Newcastle, occurs an account to `Mr Wm
Beilby, Doncaster’ for the supply of ‘2 Landscape
plates’,
9

and this is dated 16 December, 1768, a year

after the foundation of the school in the Close: and it will

be noted that by 1778 the school has shifted to
Northumberland Street. There seem also to be

indications from the workshop papers that William Beilby
was in London in 1775,
10
but there is no way of knowing

whether this stay was of any considerable duration.

However that may be, 1778 seems indeed to have been

a decisive year for the Beilby family. On the 28 June Mrs.

Beilby, the mother, died. Thomas was already on his

own, probably in Sheffield, a point to which I shall
return. Ralph the year before had taken Thomas Bewick

into partnership, and there was probably nothing to keep

William in Newcastle if more tempting opportunities

offered elsewhere. Inevitably, as for so many other
provincials, London would have provided the main lure.

Bewick had been there in 1776 and had demonstrated that
there was an artistic living to be made there.

E. Mackenzie, in his
Descriptive & Historial Account of

Newcastle upon Tyne,
published in 1827 and therefore

probably independent of Bewick’s account, wrote: ‘(he)

migrated to London and opened a school at Battersea,

where he was settled in 1784′. Whatever the exact

sequence of events, William Beilby had in fact arrived in

London by March, 1779, when his name is listed in the

Battersea vestry minutes for the 4th of that month.
11

appears to have occupied a house in Battersea Square
next to the workhouse.
11

An engraving showing the

school itself is in the Guildhall Library. It is entitled `Mr
Beilby’s Academy Battersea, Surry. Young Gentlemen

are boarded and instructed in Latin Greek French
Writing Arithmetic Merchants Accompts and Drawing

for £30 pr Ann.’: it is subscribed ‘W. Beilby delin. W.

Skelton sculp.’ Altogether, with its leafy trees, figures in

the foreground and fashionable chaise drawn up in the

background, it is an attractive print, its oval frame a
cliche

which William Beilby appears to have adopted at this
time. Rush states: ‘Battersea records show that William

Beilby appeared first as a gentleman leaseholder in 1781

and that he was referred to as a schoolmaster until

1788.
12
The Battersea vestry minutes record his

attendance last on 6 December, 1788.”
In 1785 a marriage notice dated 12 November in the

Newcastle Courant
runs: ‘A few days ago Mr William

Beilby, master of the Academy at Battersea, and brother

of Mr Ralph Beilby, engraver, of this town to Miss Eliza

Purton of Putney Heath, 12 November, 1785’.
13

Mackenzie records” that he married a niece of Mr
Falconer, a rich manufacturer, who afterwards purchased

a large estate in Fifeshire, whither William went to
manage ‘his uncle’s’ property; and Bewick says of Mary

Beilby: ‘Long after this she went with her eldest brother

into Fifeshire, where she died.’
15

Rush suggests that

William went up to Scotland in about 1788,
16
the last

record in Battersea, but the Bewick/Beilby workshop

records seem to belie this. The Ledger for 1777-1818

records that in 1789 `Wm. Beilby London’ received six

copies of Bewick’s print ‘The Whitley large Ox’,” and
in May-June, 1790, a supply of ‘Quad(rupeds)’ (Bewick’s

A
General History of Quadrupeds,

published that year).
18
In

October, 1790, `Wm. Beilby London’ received another

36 copies of
Quadrupeds,’
9
and in 1791 `Mr Beilby’,

apparently of 6, Pall Mall, exhibited four drawings at the

Society of Artists.”
The next entry concerning William Beilby in the

Bewick/Beilby papers, however, shows him in Scotland,

at East Ceres, where he was able to receive his copies of
the second volume of the
History of British Birds
in July,

1804,
21
the year of its first publication. Ceres is a small

town in Fifeshire, somewhat to the south-east of Cupar,

and some ten miles south-west of St. Andrews. Twenty-

one years ago I wrote to the Scottish Record Office to see

whether I could trace the alleged migration of William
Beilby to Scotland, the only respectable clue which I

could offer at that time being the name of Falconer, uncle

of the putative Miss Purton. I was luckier than I had
reason to hope, for I was informed of a Lydia Falconer,

widow, of Durn, residing at Dysart, who died on 15

March, 1808. Furthermore, there was a John Falconer,
‘late of Putney’ mentioned in a grant of lands at Durn (in

Banffshire) dated August, 1789, these being transferred

to Lydia
Turton,
his widow, on his death.

22
So William’s

wife was Elizabeth Turton, not Purton. To her, on her

own death in 1808, her aunt Lydia left £100 to purchase
`mournings’ for herself and family, an annuity of £200 for

the rest of her natural life, and legacies to ‘Falconer
Beilby, William Beilby and Mary Beilby the children

procreated…of the body of the said Elizabeth Beilby’.

To William Beilby himself she left a free annuity of £50

in the event of his wife’s predeceasing him.
24
The papers

also show that the estate was owed £200 ‘Bond William

Beilby, Esqr. late of London now residing in Cupar
Fifeshire bond in London …Note: the two last debts are

Considered Desparate as they are old & never could be
recovered in Mrs. Falconer’s lifetime.’
25

Indeed, Mrs.

Falconer seems to have had a poor opinion of William

Beilby’s capacities as a manager, for she stipulated that
‘the said annuities… shall not be assignable or

Transferrable…and…I hereby Exclude the Right of

administration of the said William Beilby .. ‘
26

The

three Beilby children, John Faulkener Beilby, William

Turton Beilby and Elizabeth Maria Beilby, were born in

1794, 1796 and 1798 respectively.
After 1808 there is a gap in the record until 1814, when

the
Hull Directory,
quoted by Rush”, lists ‘Bielby,

William, Drawing Master, 6 South Street’: in an 1817

edition the name was correctly spelled, but the owner

described as ‘Gent.’ living in English Street. There he

died, the
Newcastle Courant

for 16 October, 1819,

recording among its death notices, ‘On 9th inst. at Hull

Mr. Wm. Beilby, brother of the late Mr. R. Beilby of this

town.’ There has been speculation as to why the Beilbys

chose to retire to Hull when the possession of private

means would have given them other choices. I owe to my

friend Mr R.V. Fenton the suggestion that the move was

made because the second son, William Turton Beilby,

was articled as a clerk at Trinity House, Hull, about this

time. He completed his articles on 30 May, 1818, which

suggests that he entered into them in 1811 or 1813. It

seems likely that this good job was obtained by family
influence, since a Walter Beilby had been Principal

Customs Clerk in Hull for many years; and Beilby is a
common Hull surname. William Turton Beilby
prospered, for when he died in 1850 he left nearly

£10,000. His father’s and mother’s tombstone, somewhat
eroded, still survives in the Old Holy Trinity graveyard

in Hull, recording their deaths in 1819 and 1822
respectively. Rush publishes a somewhat sanctimonious

obituary which appeared in two local newspapers.

The biography of Thomas Beilby (figure 1) is less well

known. Rush only mentions him more or less
en

passant
29
. I
may, however, remind you of Bewick’s

words: ‘William … taught his brother Thomas and sister
Mary enamelling and painting.. I was never a pupil to

any drawing master, and had not even a lesson from

William Beilby, or his brother Thomas, who, along with

their other profession, were also drawing masters…
‘
2

Thomas Beilby was the youngest son of his parents, born

on 8 December, 1747, and thus seven years William’s

junior. We do not hear of his receiving any regular
tuition, and he probably learned direct from experience

and from his brother’s instruction. It would be hardly to

be wondered at if his style were modelled on William’s

and closely similar to it. We first hear of him in an
independent role in October, 1769, when the
Leeds

Mercury
(24 October) carried the advertisement:30

`DRAWING

‘T. Beilby, from Newcastle, proposes opening a Drawing

School in a commodious Room (i.e. in Leeds) to initiate
young Ladies and Gentlemen into a knowledge of the

several branches of the polite and useful accomplishment.

Enquire at Mr GRIMSHAW’s Academy.’ A further

notice on 16 October, 1770, shows that the school was
prospering. Thomas then taught ‘Landscapes and

Flowers from Nature, also views of Gentlemen’s Seats

and other Public Buildings… Silk-painting done or
taught.’ Mackenzie in his
Description & Historical Account

of Newcastle upon Tyne
(1827), writes of William Beilby:

`With his younger brother, Thomas, he gave instructions

in drawing, in which art both excelled. ..
‘

Thomas seems never to have returned permanently to

Newcastle, although from the evidence of his drawings he

visited the Northumberland countryside from time to
time to paint those ‘landscapes’ recorded in his advertise-
ment. From Leeds he appears to have migrated to

Sheffield or its vicinity, and we catch hints of his

whereabouts in the records of the Beilby-Bewick

workshop. In the Day Book for the years 1772-3 there is
record of copies of the Tyne Bridge Plate being sent to W.

Watson (his brother-in-law) in London on the one hand,

and to T. Beilby, Sheffield, on the other: and an account
cleared in 1775 with Thomas Beilby, of Sheffield,

contained in the Ledger for 1773-86, includes the items:

`To Cash paid Mr Wm Beilby for sundries £10/10/-‘ and
`Cash laid out in London &c. for sundries £3.13.6.’
32

This family concern had many ramifications. Folio 44 in the
same Ledger contains an account dated August 1775 with
Thomas Beilby, Sheffield, for paying presumably local

Sheffield tradesmen for supplies of nearly 2cwt. of glass.
33

One would like to know what sort of glass that was.

In January, 1780, Thomas married Isabella Fell,

daughter of Richard Fell, one-time Mayor of Kendall.

They were married in Sheffield,
34
and their first son,

another Thomas Beilby, was born there in April, 1781.

The birth of their second child, another William Beilby,
is rather touchingly recorded in
a journal
for 1783 kept by

father Thomas and preserved among the papers of the

Beilby family: on 19th February ‘Walked to

Grimesthorpe to engage a nurse for my Dr. Bell ( dear

Isabella). . .’ and on 13 April, ‘This morning waked at

five, my D’ Isa being ill, & at 25 minutes past 11 thro
the tender mercy of Almighty God she was safely

delivered of my second son — the circumstance

occasioned a variety of bustle thro’ the day … ‘ There

seems to be no such place as Grimesthorpe on the map of
modern England, but Grimethorpe is a small community

some miles to the north west of Barnsley, and certainly a

good long walk even for those days of heroic walking. It
makes one wonder whether perhaps Thomas and Isabella

Beilby did not live somewhere in the vicinity of Sheffield

rather than in the city itself, to which of course Thomas

could have gone for his daily business. Anyway, the baby
William is recorded in the family papers as having been

born in Sheffield, as was the next child, Isabella, born on

19 November, 1784.
On the day of Thomas’s walk to Grimethorpe he

records ‘Mess” Ps were with me … to read
&
digest our

articles of partnership before they were engrossed’. The

Messrs. P. were members of the Procter family, with
whom Thomas Beilby now went into partnership as

‘Proctor and Beilby’ purveyors of brass inkpots.
35

The

two families were to be united also in marriage when the

younger Thomas Beilby married Deborah Proctor many

years later, also in Sheffield. In the same
Journal
already

referred to, under the date 31 March, 1783, however,

Thomas records: ‘Remained late at the warehouse with
Mr. C.P. consulting about giving up my present

engagements & settling in Birmingham as agent for the

Co This he certainly seems to have done, but just when
is uncertain. Isabella Beilby was born in Sheffield towards
the end of 1784, but her father seems to have been settled

in Birmingham by 1787, when the Beilby-Bewick Ledger

for 1777-1815 shows him as receiving cash due to the
partnership from Mr. Jones, printer of Birmingham.
36

Thenceforth he
is
referred to as ‘Thomas Beilby of

Birmingham’.
Whatever his commitment to the Proctors in his last

years in Sheffield, there is one indication that he

combined it with his oid avocation of drawing master. On
14 November, 1784, he records in his
journal:
‘At (?)

Drumfield the last time before the dissolution of Mr

Astleys Academy, much pleased & affected by the
assiduity & officiousness of the young Gent’s on leaving
them — folg. me as far as they could out of the village &

testifying much respect & I believe concern —’. It is
perhaps worth nothing — to anticipate a little — that

none of Thomas Beilby’s drawings bears a date later than

August, 1780, and we may suppose that from now on his
business affairs kept him wholly occupied. His

connexions with the Beilby-Bewick Company, however,
continued and entries occur repeatedly from 1790

onwards involving `Mr. T. Beilby of Birmingham’
37
.

The last of which I have a note is dated 1804, when he
took nine copies, in varying sizes, of the second volume

of Bewick’s
History of British Birds.
38

The firm of Proctors & Beilby is referred to as in

Birmingham in Bailey’s
Universal British Directory
of about

1790, and again in the Leeds
Directory
of 1797 as

purveyors of ‘Inkpots, Leather and Brass’ — whether this

was a Leeds branch or merely a notice of the Birmingham
firm, I have not been able to check.
The rest of the record is mainly a tale of children born

in Birmingham — Richard Fell in 1786, Elizabeth in

1787, Charles in 1791, Mary in 1792, George in 1794 and

James Henry in 1796. The annotated copy of Welford’s
Men of Mark ‘twixt Tyne and Tweed
(London, 1895) in the

Newcastle Public Library contains the notice dated 3

April, 1813: ‘Tuesday sennight Mr. McMaster of Dublin

to
Isabella eldest daughter of Mr. Beilby of Birmingham’.

Thenceforth there is a steady stream of grandchildren
from both Isabella and William Beilby II, and since the

former had seven and the latter twelve, I will not burden

you with their names. Suffice it to say that Thomas Beilby

II, born in 1781, married Deborah Proctor, of Sheffield,

a daughter of one of his father’s business partners.

Thomas Beilby I died in November 1826, the last of his

generation. He had made
his

will in January, 1823,

describing himself as ‘of Birmingham, Saw Maker’.
39

He left to his widow ‘Prints, Pictures, Paintings’ and to

his son Thomas ‘ … my Book of Sketches from

Nature… and I do further request that he will select and

retain from my drawings and prints such as he shall think

may be adapted for the Use & Improvement of his dear

child Mary Ann Beilby’. The old interests presumably

stayed with him throughout the years of making brass

inkpots and saws. To his son Richard Fell Beilby he left
£500 ‘on condition that he give up to my Executors all

claims which he may have at the time of my decease upon
the Capital and Profits of the Saw manufactory now

carried on by us . ‘ There is no mention of the Beilby

and Proctor partnership.
I have deliberately excluded Mary Beilby from my

review of the family’s work, since her personality is so

shadowy and the scope of her activity so uncertain.
Let us now turn to the drawings themselves. These fall

roughly into six groups — the Paul Mellon Collection at

Yale, consisting of a bound notebook’ and 8 loose

drawings”; drawings and watercolours from mainly two

albums in the collection of the Duke of Northumberland

at Alnwick, and three separate views of Kielder Castle in
the Damask Room at Alnwick; a selection of mainly

watercolours from a volume now in the Laing Art

Gallery
42
and formerly in the possession of Mrs Jo

Binney, of Sherbourne, a descendant of William Beilby; a
miscellaneous group of watercolours and drawings from

my own collection; two wash-drawings in the Victoria

and Albert Museum
43
; and a sheaf of drawings for

cartouches which recently passed through the London

Sales Rooms and which is now in an English private

collection’. The bound sketch-book at Yale contains
exclusively drawings by Thomas Beilby, and is titled

inside the front cover ‘DRAWINGS after
NATURE/By/Tho’. Beilby Sheffield YORK” 1775′, the

date perhaps written in a later hand. The drawings
themselves are occasionally dated, the dates ranging
between 1768 and August, 1780, this last rather giving

the lie to the 1775 date of the title. The drawings are not

in chronological order, but follow a rough sequence, as if,

on the whole, the drawings were done in order but an

occasional blank page was used at a later date. Most of

the dates lie between 1772 and 1778, but the earliest are

1768 (View of Nunwick, nr. Hexham), 1769 (Kirkstall
Abbey, nr. Leeds — it may be remembered that T.

Beilby went to Leeds in that year), 1770 (View above new

Bridge on ye River Wear at Durham), 1771 (View above

Abbey Mills on the River Were at Durham).

Throughout, the drawings are signed simply ‘Beilby’, a

form of signature which William also used. The
remaining drawings at Yale, acquired separately from the

book, include two of Kidder Castle (figure 3), a hunting-

lodge of the Dukes of Northumberland lying far to the

west of Alnwick in the middle of nowhere between
Hexham and Jedburgh. The Castle was built
hot

long

before William painted it in three different views to be

found in the Damask Room at Alnwick Castle (figure 2):

one of these is dated 1778. The Yale drawings also
include one of the Duke’s residence at Syon, and four

miscellaneous, mostly Northumbrian, views.
The drawings and watercolours at Alnwick Castle

itself, apart from the Kielder Castle drawings already
mentioned, are included in a series of bound volumes

entitled ‘A Series of Sketches. Views of Great Britain’.

They have been cut out and pasted into the volumes
alongside similar work by other artists, one of whom, W.
Barron, shares the same initials as William Beilby. In a
very hard afternoon’s work at Alnwick, therefore, I

concentrated my attention on those drawings which bore
the full ‘W. Beilby’ signature, or ‘Beilby’ alone. In some

instances signature and date had been written in another
hand on the mount of the drawing rather than in the

margin of the drawing itself, but the information appears

to be copied from the original drawings and seems

reliable. The drawings in Vols. I and
III

are of views

almost exclusively in Northumberland and Durham. The

exceptions to this rule are ‘Chatsworth’ (figure 4) and
‘Reynards Hall in Dovedale’ (the latter dated 1774),

which one is tempted to think he might have done in

company with his brother Thomas, since the view of

Chatsworth exactly matches his in viewpoint (figure 5)

and is also dated 1774. One might suspect collusion or

copying were not many of the details slightly different.

One should also bear in mind that Thomas called his
work ‘Drawings after Nature’ and mentioned in his will

‘my Book of Sketches from Nature’; while William, in

another context, wrote in his book (formerly Mrs.
Binney’s) ‘Drawings from Nature in various parts of

England . . quod vidi, pinxi’ (‘what I saw I painted’).

The contents of the
4th

volume at Alnwick revert to

scenes in the neighbourhood of Newcastle, finishing with
one which is not without interest as being the subject of

an engraving, the plate for which is in the Laing Art
Gallery (figure 6). It is signed ‘W. Beilby Delin.”R.

Beilby Sculp” and is entitled ‘A Perspective View of

Wylam House & Gardens’. Under the trees can be dimly

discerned the shepherd leaning on his staff who crops up
in many of William Beilby’s compositions. One or two

further comparisons between the Yale and the Alnwick

series may be enlightening — a view of the Hermitage at
Warksworth (a few miles south of Alnwick), Thomas’s

dated 1773 (figure 8), William’s 25 October, 1773 (figure
7): and Stannington Bridge House, near Newcastle, TB’s

dated 1773 (figure 9) but W.B.’s 13 January, 1774 (figure

10) — the dates are perhaps close enough to admit of the

drawings’ being done on the same sketching trip.
The third major collection is that of Mrs Jo Binney, to

which I have unfortunately not had access except during

the Commemorative Exhibition of Beilby glasses staged

at the Laing Art Gallery in 1980. The paintings in this

collection, of the format 6% in. x 3% in., include many
Northumberland and Durham scenes, but significantly

also some from London — ‘A View in the Lane near

Battersea Field. August 1780’, a ‘Distant View of Putney

Oct. 3 ’80’ (one thinks of Eliza Turton!). The views
in

this volume seem to be more brightly coloured than those

in the Alnwick books, and I can show you one slide of the
type, a drawing belonging to our late member Mrs.

Christie Rae. It is titled ‘The Mill at Wandsworth’, and

the manner of its mounting suggests that it may well have

come from the same album (figure 11).
This book also contains a number of quite naturalistic

studies of flowers and leaves signed ‘Beilby’ and one or
two studies with figures in a landscape which seem to be

of Italian inspiration rather than ‘from Nature’. This vein
is exploited in two drawings in the V. and A. (figure 12)
which were acquired in 1961 from a group of drawings

sold at Sotheby’s —
I
believe, from the collection of a

former member of the Circle, Mr J.R. Fleming-Williams
— of which
I
bought one (figure 13). The signature on

this looks more like ‘T. Beilby’ than ‘W. Beilby’. These

drawings suggest the works of the Italianised Dutchmen

such as Nicholas van Berchem, etc.
The botanical illustrations in the Binney volume are

matched by a number from my own collection, one of

which is signed ‘Beilby’ in quite the usual manner (figure
14). But they are not all alike. All came from a single

collection formerly in the ownership of Cecil Davis, which

also included a vignette of a shepherd surrounded by a
garland of flowers (figure 15). This, like some of the
flower-studies, has been assiduously cut out and mounted

on card, and is inscribed ‘W. Beilby’ in a hand not his,
but probably copied from the original in just the same

way as the inscriptions at Alnwick.

The collection also included three scenes, one in the

bright colours of the Binney album, which seem to be
Dutch in inspiration, recalling the work of Jan van

Goyen, Salomon van Ruysdael, etc. One of them is
signed unambiguously ‘Beilby’ (figure 16).

Lastly, the group of drawings showing cartouches

(figure 17). These are strongly reminiscent of the blue
painting of the seated shepherd in my collection, and

similar, but less ambitious, cartouches are occasionally to

be found on other Beilby drawings, enclosing numbers,
etc. In this context of decorative painting may be

mentioned a fan design signed ‘Beilby’ in the possession

of
Mrs.
Rosemary Verey.

One further point should be mentioned – William

Beilby’s drawing for engraving. Wylam House has
already been discussed as well as ‘A View from Battersea’,

which doubled as an advertisement for William Beilby’s

School. These show how the skill of the engraver can

affect the quality of the finished print. The same contrast
may be in the case of the print of the Newcastle Bridge

after the flood of November, 1771, ‘W. Beilby delin.”R.
Beilby sculpt.’, widely available in 1771 and 1772 at the

price of 10d (figure 19). This may be contrasted with ‘A

View of Battersea 1784″W. Beilby’, the aquatint by
F.
Jukes,’ now in the Guildhall Library. One has to draw

the conclusion that Ralph Beilby was not always the most

sensitive of engravers, an impression confirmed by others

of his prints. No doubt the volume of work going through
his hands affected the level of quality. A view of

Busbridge in Surrey (figure 20) drawn by Wm. Beilby

shows him faithfully served by his engraver.” This no

doubt dates from his London period.

In general, it may be concluded, the Beilbys cannot be

regarded as the most polished practitioners of the arts of

figure and landscape-drawing ‘from Nature’. In these

fields Thomas may be considered a paler shadow of his
more dominant brother: had he stayed in his original

profession he might perhaps have developed a more

independent and mature style. His work in the purely

decorative field is difficult to isolate on the basis of signed
examples, but one design in the book of cartouches

already described seems every whit as accomplished as
those of his brother William.
47
It is as decorative artists

that the brothers may claim a high place in the arts of 18th

century England. Glass-collectors may take the view that

their work on glass, with all its technical difficulties,

transcends their output as drawing-masters on paper.

Note

This paper was conceived as a pendant to Simon Cottle’s
paper ‘A New Look at Beilby Glass and some recent

Discoveries’, read to the Circle on 10 December, 1985.

This was revised and published as ‘The Other Beilbys:

British Enamelled Glass of the 18th century’ in
Apollo

(October, 1986), pp.315-327.
The present text was compiled prior to the up-date of

Squadron Leader Rush’s
The Ingenious Beilbys,
entitled
A

Beilby Odyssey
(Olney, 1987).

1.
(ed.) Montague Weekley,
A Memoir of Thomas Bewick,

London

(1961), pp.45-6.
2.
Ibid., p.46.

3.
Archaeologia Aeliana,

3rd Series, XI (1914), p.70.

4.
W.A. Thorpe,

A History of English and Irish Glass,
London

(1929), I, p.229.
5.
James Rush,
The Ingenious Beilbys,

London (1973), p.88.

6.
Bernard Watney and R.J. Charleston, ‘Petitions for Patents

concerning Porcelain, Glass & Enamels, with special reference to
Birmingham, ‘The Great Toyshop of Europe”,
English Ceramic

Circle Transactions,
6, Part 2 (1966), p.121.

7.
Notably the series of great armorial goblets with Royal coat-

of-arms and Prince of Wales feathers presumed to have been
made to commemorate the birth of the future George IV in that

year. A decanter in the Victoria & Albert Museum, signed
`Beilby Jung pinxit & inv. N’Castle’ and painted with the arms

of Newcastle and Sir Edward Blackett, Bt., is additionally dated
‘1762’ in diamond-point.
8.

Notice first

discovered by Francis Buckley in 1929.

9.
Day Book 1767-72 (’53-38 HID, entry for 16.12.1768.

10.
Ledger 1773-86 (’53-38(21]), 101.44.

11.
Personal communication from Mr. R.A. Shaw, Local

History Librarian, Battersea District Library.

12.
Rush,
op. cit.,

p.122.

13.
Ms. note in the copy of R. Welford,
Men of Mark ‘twixt Tyne

and Tweed,
London (1895) in Newcastle Public Library.

14.
E. Mackenzie,
A Descriptive and Historical Account of Newcastle

on
Tyne,
Newcastle (1827), p.582.

15.
Op.cit.

in n.1, p.65.

16.
Rush,

op. cit.,
p.123.

17.
Ledger 1777-1815 (’53-38(22)), fol,262.

18.
Ibid.,

fol. 229.

19.
Ibid.,

fol.273.

20.
A. Graves,
The Society of Artists…,

London (1907), p.29. The

items were No. 24 ‘Ruins of the Opera House after the

conflagration in the Haymarket 17th June, 1789; drawing:

No.25 View of Bothwell Castle; drawing: No.26 A Landscape;

composition drawing. No.27 Its companion; drawing.

21.
Laing Art Gallery, Newcastle, T. Bewick papers, Book of

subscribers to 2nd volume of the
History
,
of British Birds.

22.
Scottish Record Office, Register of the Great Seal, Vol.125,

fol.242. I record here my grateful thanks to Mr. A. Anderson for

his help with these records.
23.
Scottish Record Office, St. Andrews Deeds, Vol. 15,

pp.311-12.

24.
Ibid.,

pp.315-6.

25.
Scottish Record Office, St, Andrews Inventories, Vol. 2,

p.51.

26.
Loc. cit.
in n.24, p.315.

27.
Rush,
op.cit.,
p.126.

28.
Ibid.,
p.127.

29.
Ibid.,
pp.72, 106-7.

30.
Notice first discovered by Francis Buckley in 1929.

31.
Op.cit.,
p.582.

32.
Day Book (53-38(11)), and Ledger 1773-86 (’53-38(21)),

fol.l.

33.
Ledger 1773-86 (’53-38(21)), fol.44. `Pd, Mr Dickinson for

Glass 1 cwt. 41b. at 12/-…’ and ‘Pd.
Mr Brummell

for Glass

981b. sorting Do. etc.’
34.
Beilby family papers in the possession of
Mr. J.

Beilby –

‘Thomas, the son of Willm. & Mary Beilby and… Isabella the

daughter of Richd and Agnes Fell, who were married at the Old

Church in Sheffield on the 1st of January, 1780’. I am greatly
indebted to Mr. Beilby for allowing me to make use of these

papers, which provide the biographical material for Thomas

Beilby unless stated otherwise.

35.
Sheffield Directory,

for 1787.

36.
Ledger 1777-1815 (’53-35(22)), fol.157.

37.
Ibid.,

fol. 262 (received 7 copies of ‘The Whitley Large Ox’,

1789); fol. 273 (sent 14 copies of the
History of Quadrupeds,
Oct.

1790); fol. 348 (wood-cut for Mr. Pearson of Birmingham, via

T. Beilby, Oct. 1795); fol. 370 (books, etc. sent, July, 1796); fol.
405 (account for 1797-8 with Mr. Pearcy, bookseller of

Birmingham settled by cash to T.B.); fol. 408 (account of T.B.,

Birmingham, settled by cash to Ralph Beilby, Aug.1798).
38.

Book of subscribers to the second volume of T. Bewick’s

History of British Birds,
9 volumes sent to T. Beilby on 3

September, 1804.

39.
Somerset House, PPC, 11 Heber 1730. 550.6/1.77,101.523.

40.
Yale Center for British Art, No. B. 1977.14. 1356-1406.

41.
Ibid.,
No. B 1975. 2. 46-53.

42.
Mus. Nos. TWC Ms. M7242-N763, 22 items.

43.
Mus. Nos. E.114-1961 & E.115-1961.

44.
Armin
B.
Allen Inc., 33 East 68th Street, New York,
The Art

of Design 1575-1875,
Exhibition 13 November – 7 December,

1985, Nos. 64ff.
45.
Francis Jukes (1747-1812). The Thieme-Becker article on

Jukes mentions ‘A View of Chelsea 1784’ after W. Beilby and ‘A

View of Battersea 1784’, presumably the print illustrated in
figure
18.

46.
W. Angus, who also was responsible for the volume in which

it appeared –
The Seats of the Nobility and Gentry in Great Britain and

Wales in a Collection of Select Views Engraved by
W.
Angus from Pictures

and Drawings by the most Eminent Artists,
London (1787), pl.VI

(described as ‘from a Drawing by Mr. BEILBY, of
BATTERSEA’).

47.
Op.cit.
in n.44, No.76, where the initials TB are suggested

as those of Thomas Bewick, Ralph Beilby’s apprentice, on the

mistaken assumption that `No member of the Beilby Family who

worked at the workshop bore these initials’.

Acknowledgements
Figures 2, 4, 7 and 10 are reproduced by kind permission

of His Grace, The Duke of Northumberland; figures 3,

5, 8 and 9 by courtesy of the Yale Center for British Art,
Paul Mellon Collection.

Figure 1. Silhouette portrait of Thomas Beilby

(1747-1826). Original in possession of Mr.

Jonathan Beilby.
tiab-

–

Figure 2.
Kielder Castle,

watercolour, signed ‘W. Beilby Delin’ &

Fecit’, datable to 1778. Alnwick Castle (Photo: G. T. Skipper).

Figure
3. Kielder Castle,
watercolour by Thomas Beilby. Yale Center

for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection (B.1975, 2.47).

Figure
4. Chatsworth,

watercolour, signed ‘W. Beilby pinxit’. Alnwick

Castle (Photo: G. T. Skipper).

Figure

5. Chatsworth,
watercolour by

Thomas Beilby, dated June, 1774. Yale
Center for British Art, Paul Mellon

Collection (B.1977.14. 1356-1406).

(11.11Y11
7
1
,

1ur
,

Figure 6.
Wylam House and

Gardens.
Pull from a copper-plate,

signed ‘R. Beilby sculp”, ‘W. Beilby
Delin.’ Laing Art Gallery, Newcastle-

upon-Tyne.

Figure 7. `View from the Hermitage near
Warkworth taken from one of the cells’,

watercolour, inscribed ‘W. Beilby Oct. 25th,
1773’ on the mount. Alnwick Castle (Photo:

G. T. Skipper).

„Yr
so

Figure 8. ‘A View from the Hermitage near
Warkworth Northd ‘ watercolour by Thomas

Beilby, dated June 1778. Yale Center for

British Art, Paul Mellon Collection (B
1977.14. 1356-1406).

;
7
.

Figure 9. `Stannington Bridge the Seat of
Mr. Ward’, watercolour by Thomas

Beilby, dated July 1773. Yale Center for

British Art, Paul Mellon Collection (B
1977.14. 1356-1406).

Figure 10. ‘South view of Stannington
Bridge House’, watercolour, signed Reilby

fed. ‘ and inscribed on mount ‘W. Beilby

Jan. 13th 1774’. Alnwick Castle (Photo:
G. T. Skipper).

Figure 11. ‘The Mill at Wandsworth’,

watercolour, probably by W. Beilby. Dated

`1780′ in pencil. Formerly in the possession
of Mrs. Christie Rae.

Figure 12. Italianate scene, grey wash, signed (?)
`T. Beilby Delint 1774. No. 5001.’ Victoria and

Albert Museum (E.114-1961). Crown Copyright.

Figure 13. Italianate scene, grey wash, signed (?) ‘T.
Beilby Delin’ 1774′. R.J. Charleston.

Figure 16. Dutch scene, watercolour, signed Beilby’, probably

for William Beilby. R.J. Charleston.

Figure 14. Flower piece, watercolour, signed Beilby’,

probably for William Beilby. R.J. Charleston.

Figure 15. Vignette of a shepherd seated below a tree, within a frame of

Figure 17. Design for a cartouche, signed ‘TB. delini., by

flowers and leaves, in blue wash. Inscribed on the reverse ‘W. Beilby’ .in

Thomas Beilby, about 1765-70. Laing Art Gallery, Newcastle

a 19th century hand. R.J. Charleston.

upon Tyne.

A \Vest View of tile Hy ins of NE:wt

.
:
v

.
1’LE
IS
Ilici

I .,:qpr,

At.r.

•

4e1.-

714u.

A44*,

„, A

„„,„

.14

….ph.”,

•

Figure 18. View at Battersea,

‘W. Beilby Deli- Francis Jukes fecit’.
City of London, Guildhall Library.

Figure 19. ‘A West View

of the Ruins of Newcastle

Bridge’, copper-plate

engraving signed ‘W.

Beilby Delinf R. Beilby

Sculp’ ‘. 1771.

Figure 20.
Busbridge in Surrey,
copper-plate

engraving by W. Angus, from a Drawing by

Mr Beilby, of Battersea’ from W. Angus,
The

Seats of the Nobility and Gentry…,
1787.

THE FRENCH CONNECTION:

THE DECORATIVE GLASS OF JAMES A. JOBLING
AND CO. OF SUNDERLAND DURING THE 1930s

by Kate Crowe

A Paper read to the Circle on 13 February, 1986

It is no light task to follow the two earlier
tours de force
on

the Beilby family and their associates, and I am

particularly conscious that the main subject of this paper

— the decorative glass produced by James A. Jobling and

Co. at Sunderland in the 1930s — may seem in artistic
terms to suffer by comparison. But although this range

was neither very original nor exclusive, many individual

items are attractive and show that taste, feeling and skill
went into their execution.

Furthermore, the story of how this glass — bowls, vases

and ornaments in the style of Lalique, the master French
glassmaker — came to be developed in the North East of
England by a company whose previous claim to fame was

the production of PYREX heat-resistant glassware (and of
beermugs for the NAAFI) is an intriguing one which

deserves to be better known. Not only was it an
interesting chapter in the history of a remarkable

glassworks whose achievements are only just beginning to

be recognised, but it is a good example of a positive

response by a British firm to the challenge posed by

continental glass between the wars.

In order to show how this new development by Jobling

was both innovative and yet in some respects

characteristic of its earlier history, it is necessary first of

all to give some background on the town, the company

and its forerunner, Henry Greener and Co.
1

Sunderland’s first French connection was established

in the seventh century, when Benedict Biscop brought

continental glassmakers to glaze the church and

monastery of St. Peter at Monkwearmouth. Even so the
real beginnings of the glass industry in Sunderland date

from about 1700, when bottle and window glass
manufacturers were attracted there by the abundance of

both cheap coal as furnace fuel and sea transport to

deliver raw materials and to take the finished product

away to markets in London and Europe.
2

The industry reached its artistic apogee in Sunderland

between 1820 and 1850, when a number of skilled cutters

and engravers were responsible for tablewares of
exceptionally high quality. The rummers engraved with

views of Sunderland’s famous Iron Bridge are relatively
familiar, but it is perhaps less well-known that cut glass

of the quality of the Londonderry Service was also

produced there. This opulent suite, consisting of over 200

pieces, including jugs, decanters, bowls, honey jars and

goblets, was worth nearly £2,000 when it was made in

1824 by the Wear Flint Glass Works of White, Young and

Tuer. It was ordered by the 3rd Marquess of
Londonderry for Wynyard Hall, his seat in County

Durham, and practically every piece bears his coat of
arms (see figures 1 and 2). This collection has now been

acquired by Sunderland Museum and is on permanent

display there.

When the Duke of Wellington visited Sunderland in

October 1827, it was reported that ‘in the procession
which conducted His Grace into the town were the

workmen employed in the extensive glassworks of Messrs

White and Young, wearing glass feathers and stars of
glass and carrying before the Hero a representation of a

battery mounted with glass cannon.’
3
And among the

ornaments on the dinner table at the Exchange Building

in High Street (a view often depicted on rummers of the
period: see fig. 3) was ‘a lofty and splendidly cut glass

lamp from the same works, which was highly admired’.
4

One of the glassmakers who escorted the Duke to the

Exchange Building may have been a notable engraver

called Robert Greener, who is known to have worked for

White, Young and Tuer. Alternatively, he may have
preferred to watch the procession and its attendant

crowds of 40,000 people from the upper windows of his

home at No. 90 High Street,
5

in the company of his

seven-year-old son Henry — and it is with Henry

Greener that the story of Jobling really begins.
Henry followed family tradition by going into the glass

industry, being apprenticed at the age of twelve to a

Gateshead manufacturer called John Price. By the time

he was nineteen he had been appointed the firm’s

traveller, and after some years’ experience he went on to

work for Sowerby, also of Gateshead, whose firm was just
beginning to produce the pressed glass for which it

became famous later in the nineteenth century. Greener’s
remarkable business aptitude made him an asset to
Sowerby, but he was also a man of strong character and

was not content to remain a paid subordinate all his life.

In 1858 he returned to Sunderland, formed a

partnership with James Angus and (perhaps with money

inherited from his father or his maternal grandfather, a
Newcastle glass manufacturer) took on the Wear Flint

Glass Works in Trimdon Street. In a contemporary print,

this small factory can be seen confronting the massive
Wear Glass Works belonging to James Hartley (figure 4).

But while Hartley’s Works were renowned for the

production in vast quantities of clear and coloured

window glass, Angus and Greener made their name by

producing a wide range of pressed glass tablewares. In

fact, to Angus and Greener belongs the distinction of

being the first North Eastern firm to register a design in
pressed glass (the year being 1858) and they were

responsible for many others in
the

years that followed.
6

Angus died in 1869, but Greener not only carried on

the business by himself but was able to move to larger

premises at Back Alfred Street, Millfield, in Sunderland.

On this site, the nucleus of all future development,

Greener’s glassmakers produced some 600 varieties of
domestic tableware and decorative or commemorative
items in clear, coloured or slag glass (e.g. figure 5) as well

as pavement lights, glass letters for shop signs,

lampshades for railway carriages and ‘Roman tiles’ or
glass mosaics for fireplace surrounds.
Greener died in 1882, leaving a personal estate of just

over £10,000 and a will which disinherited one son and

left the Works in the charge of the other. Probate was not

obtained until the end of 1884,
7
nearly 2 1/2 years later,

and it is possible that this added to the difficulties of the
firm, which was going through a bad patch. In 1885,

being close to bankruptcy, Greener’s was taken over by
its principal creditor, James Augustus Jobling. James

Jobling, at that time owner of the Tyne Oil and Grease
Works and one of the largest mineral merchants and

suppliers of glassmaking chemicals in the North East, had

originally made his fortune by importing South American
guano for use as agricultural fertiliser.
Jobling’s first action was to change the name of the

firm to Greener and Co. and to put it on a sound financial

footing. Edwin Greener remained as manager, and he

introduced new designs like the fruitbowl registered in

1888
8
(figure 6). The pattern of interlocking shells is

reminiscent of the motifs in Durham quilting, themselves

folk memories of eighteenth century rococo designs.

There was also further product diversification and some
new machinery was installed. Greener and Co.’s interest

in new technology even led them to install the telephone,
being the third subscriber to Sunderland’s newly opened

exchange. But the company was never very successful,

and yet another financial crisis goaded Jobling into

appointing his nephew, Ernest Purser, as manager and

chief technologist in 1902.
Ernest Purser (figure 7) was one of the most

remarkable members of a notable Anglo-Irish family,

successive generations of whom occupied Chairs at

Trinity College Dublin in the nineteenth century.
Ernest’s father died young, leaving his family unprovided

for, and it was James Jobling who paid for his nephew’s

education. Ernest thus had to work for a living, and
through the good offices of one of his Purser uncles, who

had been tutor to Sir Charles Parsons at Trinity College

Dublin, he was apprenticed as an electrical engineer at
Parsons’ Heaton Works. There he is said to have assisted

in the development of the steam turbine for the
revolutionary ship,
The Turbinia,

which created a

sensation at the Jubilee Review of 1897 by showing it

could outpace the fastest ships of the Royal Navy.
Purser’s appointment to Greener and Co. turned out to

be a perfect example of the right man in the right place

at the right time. The possessor of shrewd business sense

and managerial skill, he had learned from Parsons the
importance of research, development and continuous

capital investment, and this concern for technological

improvement characterised his whole career. At the same
time he showed an inspired willingness to take risks, and

this buccaneering instinct enabled him to fulfil his
reputed ambition to make a million pounds and retire.
9

Purser (who later took the surname Jobling-Purser
when he became his uncle’s heir) showed his awareness of

new American and German technology by installing new

furnaces, Miller semi-automatic presses and improved
ventilation, while the firing of lehrs was converted from

coke to town gas.° The First World War, however,

brought a temporary halt to the company’s growing
profitability, as so many glassmakers had joined the

Services that the Works were being run by apprentices

with the help of women. Cheap tablewares and containers
for potted meat were the main lines being produced.
In 1918, however, Ernest Purser showed his skill as a

fixer by persuading the War Office to demobilize his key

workers very soon after the Armistice, and with their help

a programme of reconstruction went steadily forward.

Then in 1921 he took the momentous decision which was
to transform his life and the Company. That year two
representatives of the Corning Glass Works of America

visited practically all the glassmakers in the British Isles,

hoping to interest one of them in the possibility of buying
the option to manufacture under licence their remarkable

heat-resistant glassware called PYREX. This glass was

developed initially for railway lanterns and battery jars,
then one of the Corning employees took home a cut-down

jar and his wife baked a
cake

in it with perfect results.

This encouraged Corning to develop a range of PYREX

ovenware as an alternative to heavy cast iron,
earthenware and enamel. By 1921 Corning already

exported a certain amount to England, where it was sold
by agents such as F. Trauffler of Hatton Garden (figure

8), but they needed a British manufacturing base to

capture a larger slice of the market.

By the time the Corning representatives reached
Sunderland, they were almost at the end of their money

and very dispirited. British manufacturers dismissed

PYREX as a gimmick and condescendingly declared that
most housewives would be afraid to cook in glass. Ernest

Jobling-Purser was the only one who recognised the
potential of the Corning proposal, and after a brief trip to

America to obtain the necessary technical information, he

acquired the right to manufacture and market PYREX

glassware in Great Britain and the Empire, excluding

Canada. The first batch was mixed in 1922 (see figure 9)

and the first articles made were casseroles and pudding

basins. The following year the company began to

diversify into laboratory ware, and the profits began
rolling in.
In the early years, Jobling and Co. produced fairly

utilitarian PYREX glassware: the classic casserole dishes,

bread pans, stew pots etc. were generally copies of designs

first developed by Corning. Gradually however the range

increased to include items for the British market, such as

soup-plates and soup-pots (figure 10) and a wider range
of serving dishes as illustrated in the PYREX
Cookery Book

(figure 11). Then blown PYREX was introduced,

including teapots and tumblers for hot milk or cocoa

(figure 12). Grand households could buy PYREX in

silver-plated holders (figure 13) for their dinner parties;

some casseroles were engraved with designs of flowers
and leaves (figure 14) or cut in an attempt to resemble

lead crystal (figure 15). Traditionalists could buy a
version of PYREX bearing a stylized Willow Pattern
design (figure 16) which was the brainchild of the

enigmatic Mr Haywood. He worked by himself in a but

in the Works Yard, and had developed his own technique

of acid-engraving metal moulds. All sections of the

market were catered for — there was even the
PYREXETTE for children, which consisted of a miniature

lidded casserole dish, a pie plate, a soup-pot with ears and

a lid, a shell-shaped cake dish and two small ramekins or

patty tins.”
Ernest Jobling-Purser had indeed a versatile product,

whose uses were being constantly and imaginatively

extended. Profits were ploughed back into the business in
the form of new equipment, which improved production

and reduced costs, while there was also a massive and
continuous advertising campaign, mounted by J. Walter

Thompson and Co. Ltd., in newspapers, trade journals
and women’s magazines. This campaign, costing £10,000
in 1931
12

alone, certainly encouraged wider sections of

the community to buy PYREX glassware. Even the

impurities in the batch which gave the glass a yellow tinge
were turned to good account and a selling point was made

of ‘Golden’ PYREX.
It was one of the success stories of the century,

appealing to households deprived of domestic servants

and appreciative of the labour-saving aspect of PYREX

oven-to-tableware; to cooks who found it an excellent
conductor of heat, and to housewives who found it much
easier to clean than conventional dishes. Just one

indicator of how much it had been accepted can be seen
in interwar cookery books, where in many cases the

recipe illustrations show PYREX glassware in use.
13

And

in many advertisements for food products such as custard

and puddings, the preferred serving dish was unmistakably
PYREX.
In 1923 sales of Jobling PYREX totalled a modest

£3,214: by 1927 they had reached £79,000 and were still
rising.’ The company which had covered barely half an

acre and employed about a hundred men now stretched
over a two-acre site and had about a thousand men,
women and girls on the payroll. Its administration had

also changed. James A. Jobling retired in 1928 and
Ernest Jobling-Purser became Governing Director with

full responsibility for company policy. In the early years

he had been assisted by a manager, a cashier and an office
girl: he now had the aid of a small executive board, a

company secretary, a research director, a chemist and a
sales manager.

By 1930 therefore, the company had been transformed

from a small local firm into an internationally known and

extremely profitable company with a large export
business. Not the least of its achievements was that at the

height of the Depression. James A. Jobling and Co. was

one of the few firms in the North East which not only

increased its workforce but also raised wages.
Bearing in mind this prosperity, it may be asked what

prompted the new development which startled the trade

in 1933. That year, a striking four-page coloured

advertisement in
The Pottery Gazette

announced ‘A

Revolution in British Pressed Glass Manufacture’ and

stated that ‘A new era in decorative glassware for the
home has dawned with the introduction of Jobling’s new

coloured pressed glass.”
5
The illustrations on the

succeeding pages showed a range of bowls, vases and
decorative items ‘in glass of soft pastel shades, such as

opaline, a delicate grey, pink and bottle green, and
exhibiting mouldings which are as soft and smooth in

their outline, as though the pieces were, in fact,

sculptured in glass’.
The forms, finishes and choice of colours reflected the

influence of Rene Lalique, whose work had been the
talking point of the Exposition des Arts Decoratifs in
Paris in 1925. It had already inspired a number of

continental imitators
16
and in view of the artistic success

of Lalique-style glass with its great commercial

possibilities, it is not surprising to note the appearance of

a British version. But why did Jobling venture into this

new and risky field? And who were the ‘famous artists’

said to have designed this new range of glass?
Some answers and some important clues came to light

in the Minutes of the Jobling Executive Board, and others

in the great mass of correspondence relating to the

Jobling advertising account held by J. Walter Thompson
and Co.
17

These records, together with oral evidence

from a wide range of former Jobling employees, show that

while the production and sales of PYREX glassware had
rocketed, those of the flint glass department showed a

steep and depressing decline, and this problem was the
cause of much discussion and activity in the ensuing

decade.

Flint glass accounted for about 10% of the company’s

total production in 1930, and some 45
%
of this figure

consisted of beermugs etc. for the NAAFI. Utility lines

such as butter dishes, salt cellars, lemon squeezers and so
on were produced for sale in Woolworths, while the
Weardale
suite (which imitated cut-glass table services)

had been developed in an attempt to challenge the market
primacy of a pressed glass entitled
Jacobean.
l8

But all

Jobling flint glass was hand-gathered and hand-pressed,

and was expensive in comparison with continental

imports.
As the Directors pointed out in 1931 ‘The dumping

from abroad of cheap flint glass made under conditions

with which the Company cannot at present compete,

creates a serious menace to the home market and makes

is extremely difficult to sell flint glass at remunerative
prices’.
19
The production of flint glass had recently been

subsidised by profits on the PYREX glassware side, but
the goose that had laid so many golden eggs was itself

under threat. The PYREX borosilicate glassware patent

was due to expire in April 1933 and it was by no means

certain that an extension would be granted.
The Directors recognised the need for a strategy to

overcome these problems and their solution was as
follows: ‘It is clear that if the Company is to progress and
the volume of sales is to be kept up, every effort must be

made to find new markets for its products and new

products for its markets.’ In relation to flint glass

production they declared: ‘Between Pressed Glass and

Cut Glass there would appear to be a wide gap and it

would seem that in that gap there is a large purchasing
power. The Company might… with advantage consider

the introduction of high grade Pressed Glass… which

would enable it to standardise on quality and obtain
better and more remunerative prices for its goods.’
2°

Following discussion of these proposals in the summer of

1931, the Company moved into a new phase of
development.

The Company’s new strategy contained such familiar

elements as increased capital investment in the form of

the installation of two Theisen recuperative furnaces

which were more fuel efficient and could produce the

higher temperatures needed for diversification. A market
research programme was also undertaken and this

produced the very clear message that new lines and

novelties were essential. Subsequent diversification
proceeded on three fronts. On the PYREX glassware side

there was a concerted drive towards new types and

markets. Research into white and coloured PYREX was
begun about this time, and the Willow Pattern design,

which hitherto had been restricted to casserole dishes, was

extended to whole dinner services. The stylized Willow
Pattern was later replaced by a more attractive transfer-

printed version (figure 16) and this proved popular. The

designer Harold Stabler was also commissioned to
produce a new range of
Streamline
casseroles (figure 17) –

all gentle curves and flying saucer rims, in round, oval

and octagonal forms. They were undoubtedly elegant but

some customers complained that they were difficult to
grip when removing from the oven. Yet more effort was

devoted to the marketing of PYREX insulators for power

lines and to the production of screens for the first
television sets (which meant that on the outbreak of war,

the company was ordered to switch to the production of
radar screens).
Lighting was the second new field into which Jobling

ventured. The manufacture of opal glass lighting bowls

was researched and two Polish blowers were engaged,

enabling the firm to supply globes for lighting Woolworth

and Marks and Spencer stores. The company even
produced glass lighting panels for use in modern interior

decorating schemes, and examples were sold to the
Mitcham Cinema.

On the flint side there were several new ventures,

including the introduction of various cheap lines for

automatic pressing on the new flint tank furnace, and also
of coloured domestic glassware. And it was in this context

that the most daring venture of all — a range of

decorative or ‘Art’ glass — was first mooted and
undertaken.
In 1931, when the firm’s travellers were insisting on the

need for new lines, articles made by other firms were sent

to the Works for consideration and a Lalique bowl, above

all others, caught the eye. Lalique had first made his

name by producing fantastic jewels for the millionaire

Calouste Gulbenkian to give to Sarah Bernhardt. He then

went on to design glass scent bottles for Coty and other
French firms, but at the Paris Exhibition of Decorative

Arts in 1925, he showed that he had created a completely

new style of glassware.

In the first place he treated glass as an architectural

medium, making fountains, walls, door panels and

illuminated tables, skilfully using the passage of light to

accentuate the design. Secondly, using modern industrial
techniques and assisted by a team of artists, Lalique

produced a series of original designs in pressed or

moulded, coloured, opalescent or surface-coloured glass.

It included car mascots, statuettes, vases, bowls and light

fittings, and the style most closely associated with Lalique

and which particularly interested Jobling, was that of

bowls and vases in opalescent or acid-etched glass,
patterned in high relief with motifs of the human figure,
birds, fish, insects and flowers.’ Nothing like this was

being produced in Britain at that time, so the

introduction of a Jobling version would have all the

advantages of novelty. And if it was cheaper than
Lalique, the domestic sales potential could be immense.

Ernest Jobling-Purser agreed in principle to this new

venture, but there was a major problem — the source of

such new designs.
British designers and mouldmakers had been trained to

produce copies of cut glass, and most of them would have

been unwilling as well as unable to attempt anything

different. The solution seems to have been devised by a
triumvirate consisting of the Sales Manager, a leading

glass wholesaler of Leeds, and the Company Secretary.

They seem to have been especially interested in the idea

of copying Lalique, and Hubert Robson (the Sales
Manager) who had been the Suchard Chocolate

Company’s representative in Paris, knew Montmartre

and the artistic community very well. He is understood to

have visited Paris and to have asked a friend who had

been one of Lalique’s artists to submit designs for the new
range.
22

The results were studied by the trio and orders given

for the production of some half-dozen clay models,

including the Fircone, Flower, Bird, Tudor Rose, and

Oyster Shell patterns. These must have been received and

submitted to the Board early in 1932, to give time for the
ordering and manufacture of the actual moulds and

production of the first examples in July 1932. The name

of the artist is unfortunately still unknown, but probably

all the clay models mentioned above were the work of M.
Etienne Franckhauser, the foremost mouldmaker in Paris

at that time.
Clients at his atelier in the Rue Stendhal included

Sabin, Hunebelle and most notably Lalique: the last

named indeed could entrust M. Franckhauser with no

more than a rough pencil sketch and leave him to work

it up into a finished design. The moulds he made for
Lalique included those for scent bottles, the illuminated

fountain in the Champs Elysees, and lighting aboard the

liner
Normandie,
and the
Orient Express.
23
M.

Frankhauser is known to have made plaster models for

thirty-one items in Jobling’s decorative glass range, from

bowls and vases to female and animal statuettes, and he

may well have been responsible for others. It is also said

that other designs in the range were the work of a firm in

the Alsace-Lorraine area, which periodically sent sketches

and examples from their own moulds to Jobling.

Moulds for the first six designs were cast in bronze by

an art foundry at Porte de la Villette in Paris, while later

examples were made at a London bell foundry which

specialised in fine-art moulding, or were cast in meonite
at Middlesbrough.

The Jobling range of decorative glass thus had a double

connection with Lalique, through his erstwhile artist and
through
.

M. Franckhauser the mouldmaker. The parallels

with Lalique’s own designs are therefore perhaps even

closer than might have been expected.
24

The Lalique

Dahlia
bowl, for instance (figure 18), where the flowers

form the base, and the
Petrarque

vase with its patterned

side panels (figure 19) have obviously inspired the Rose

Panelled Vase and the
Lambton

rose bowl illustrated in the

1934 Jobling catalogue (figure 20). The Lalique

cockleshell bowl (figure 21) is copied by Jobling

–
and in a

similarly opalescent glass (figure 22). Small animal
figures (figure 23) were also produced for a short time by

Jobling, usually in opalescent glass (figure 24). The
Lalique
Archers
vase, moulded in shallow relief with an

acid-etched surface, was clearly the source for the Jobling
mould-blown
Bird and Corn
vase (figure 25). Lalique

created various vases and bowls ornamented with

budgerigars and other birds, and Jobling followed suit

with a design, usually produced in opalescent glass

(occasionally in amber) which is easily one of the most
attractive pieces in the range (figures 26-27).
Between 1932 and 1939, about 70 different designs

were produced for Jobling’s art glass range. They were

advertised in colour in the
Pottery Gazette
and other trade

papers, and illustrated in a lavish colour catalogue

(figures 20, 28, 29). Other items of interest included salad

bowls and salad servers (figure 30), a square honey box

and spoon, and the blown vases converted to standard

lamps. But although promoted as the ‘British revolution

in glass’, the designs were almost all of French origin and

Jobling only deserves credit for going to such noteworthy
sources.

On the other hand, the Jobling chemists deserve some

acknowledgement for their development of the glass itself.

Coloured glass had always been produced by the flint
glass department and it could be said that in returning to

the manufacture of coloured domestic glass and novelties,

James A. Jobling and Co. were merely following in the

tradition set by Henry Greener in the nineteenth century.

The real problem, however, was how to produce more

repeatable colours. One of the main difficulties associated

with the manufacture of coloured glass was that the

constituents of the batch, being natural, varied in purity

according to their place of origin, and this variation

affected the intensity of the colour produced. The colour

could also vary according to the heat of the furnace,
which at that time was much less controllable.

Around 1930, therefore, with a view to producing more

reliable colours, Jack Mather (the Jobling chemist) began

to subject all raw materials to chemical analysis and also

carried out a series of trial melts containing known

amounts of colouring agents. As a result, a range of

standard colours was available by the time the decorative
glass programme was under way, and it became possible

to produce such unusual shades as ‘Opalique’, ‘Jade’,
`Pearl’ and ‘Tortoiseshell’.

The origins of `Opalique’ probably date back to a

suggestion in 1931
25

that the Company should

manufacture and sell opalescent lighting panels as

produced by the firm of Chance Bros. in the U.K. and by
Lalique in France. It was well known that opal glass could

be produced by the use of phosphate, fluorine and
alumina as opacifying agents, and as Jobling was already

using them to make translucent lighting bowls, it was easy

to use them as a base for experiments with various
additives. The addition of a trace of cobalt to a particular

batch was successful in producing an attractive blue glass

with an inner golden fire, very similar to that used by
Lalique. The density of the opalescence depended on the
rate of cooling of the outside relative to the centre: the

opal within cooled more slowly, allowing crystals to form
which reflected the light. This opacity was denser the
thicker the glass and is particularly notable, for instance, in

the small bird bowl and in the fish statuette (figures 26, 24).

‘Opalique’ was so similar to the opalescent glass of

Lalique that Jobling actually wrote to Paris, proposing to

make lighting panels under licence from the master

himself. Lalique refused, but Sabino, who was also
approached, was favourable to the idea, and it only fell

through on financial grounds. Further laboratory analysis
of Lalique glass was completed by 1935 and the name
‘Opalique’ was registered as trademark No. 552558 in

March that year.
`Jade’ glass was a semi-opaque glass in a deep green

shade, and was technically described as an uranium
moonstone glass (figure 31). Like `Opalique’ it was a

more expensive glass to produce, and the retail cost of

articles in that shade was higher. Although the quantity

of uranium added to the batch was too small to be
harmful, the trace in individual pieces still produces a

degree of radiation slightly above that of the normal

atmosphere.
Many designs could be ordered in any of the following

colours — clear flint, pink, blue, amber, green, jet and

‘Jade’ (figure 32) — and some could be obtained in a

choice of matt or satin finish, produced by sand-blasting

or acid-etching respectively. Acid-etching was essential
for a subtle effect on such items as the ‘Opalique’ animals

or the mould-blown vases (figures 24, 33, 25). The range
was generally distinguished by its very high ‘firepolish’

finish — i.e. on removal from the mould the glass was
reheated at very high temperatures to smooth out tiny

imperfections caused by the surface of the mould.

Jobling decorative glass was aimed at ‘the beauty-

loving housewife who is looking for attractive and useful

ornaments for her home’
26
, particularly those who

favoured modern schemes of decoration in which the

stereotyped imitations of cut glass would look out of
place. Advertising stressed the elegant economy of the

designs: ‘while the glass itself gives the impression of
quality and “tone”, its cost is reasonable in the
extreme’ .
27

The confident tone of the advertisements was

unfortunately belied by the results. Flint sales declined

and the Board was informed that the L1,000 spent on

advertising the art glass had brought such disappointing
results as not to warrant its continuance. It was observed

that lenses, cans and tumblers amounted to two-thirds of

that department’s production in September 1935, and

that this was subsidising work on the decorative glass. It

was recognised that a series of new designs would still be
needed, but in order to avoid the high cost of moulds from

abroad, it was decided in April 1936 to engage a full-time
house designer. Attempts to obtain the services of Keith

Murray fell through, and eventually John Goss was

appointed ‘House Artist’ in October 1936, on probation
for two years.

During the winter of that year and the spring of 1937

poor selling lines were withdrawn from the catalogue, and

although it was decided that new lines would still be

produced for the main buying seasons, the designs would

be simplified and would include utilitarian items such as

flower troughs. There was to be more concentration on

designs for automatic production, to cut costs and
increase volume.

The Second World War halted any further expansion

of this side of Jobling’s flint glass production, and no

application for renewal was made in respect of the
remaining designs whose registration was due to expire in

the 1940s. After the war, however, perhaps in an attempt

to increase exports, two further designs in the Lalique

style were registered and produced.
Both were lighting bowls, one decorated with an iris

pattern,
28
the other with a stylized mermaid design

which looked forward to the 1950s. They sold sufficiently

well to encourage the Company to renew their

registrations for another five years, but overall sales of

domestic flint glass items continued to fall and were

finally discontinued in 1960.
Although individual items such as the Lovebirds

(figure 33), the Bird Bowl, the Fish and the Statue and
Block sold quite well, not even the most enthusiastic

supporters of the decorative glass project would say it was
a great commercial success. The flint department still
usually ran at a loss, and never made more than £3,000
profit in any one year, which was out of all proportion to

the time and money expended. So why had it failed?
In the first place, it was underpriced in relation to high

labour and production costs; the moulds, for example,

were expensive and some needed much work to adapt
them to the pressing technique. The quality of the designs

was also variable, and overall the range lacked the

originality and exclusivity which would have attracted the

most discerning (for whom in any case the appeal of Art
Deco was already on the wane). At the same time it was

probably too far ahead of the popular taste of the mass
market. Cut glass, real or imitation, was reassuringly

familiar.
That no-one diagnosed this weakness and devised

means of overcoming it can be ascribed to various factors,

one of which was the existence of two opposing camps
within the flint glass department itself. One side held that
prosperity lay in the production of lenses for motor car

headlamps and other optical glass, while the other

championed the need to go upmarket with the decorative

glass. They vied with one another for the services of the
best mouldmakers and resources, and in the end the art

glass lost out. Then came the war, and the energies of the

flint department were diverted to work of more prosaic
urgency, to wit, beermugs for the
NAAFI.

It was nevertheless a courageous attempt to place on

the market coloured glassware of a high standard of finish

and design, and the items in the decorative ‘Art Glass’

range (many of them very scarce) remain as a testament

to a short-lived but innovative period in the history of

James A. Jobling and Co. and of the British glass

industry.

Acknowledgements
I am particularly grateful to Nick Dolan of Sunderland
Museum and to Wendy Evans of the Museum of London

for their help in obtaining many of the illustrations

accompanying this article.

1.
This article owes much to the original research of John Baker,

Stuart Evans and Cindy Shaw, published as
PYREX-60 Years of

Design
(Tyne and Wear County Council Museums, 1983) to

accompany the exhibition of the same name at Sunderland
Museum. I am grateful to the staff of Sunderland Museum for

manifold assistance, and for permission to reproduce many of the

accompanying illustrations; and to Corning Limited (successors

to Jobling), Wear Glass Works, Sunderland, for much help and

for permission to quote from material in their possession. For

additional source references and more detailed acknow-

ledgements relating to the history of Jobling art glass, see John
Baker and Kate Crowe,
A Collector’s Guide to Jobling 1930s

Decorative Glass
(Tyne and Wear County Council Museums,

1985).

2.
The Glass of Tyne and Wear,
Part I,

Class on Wearside
(Tyne and

Wear County Council Museums, 1979).

3.
The Durham County Advertiser,
13 October, 1827, p. 1 .

4.
Ibid.

5.
Corder MSS (Sunderland Refer’:nce Library): see Volume

IV, Sundry Papers, for material on the Greener family, and R. J.

Charleston,
Class Circle
4 (1982), Some English Engravers: late

18th-early 19th century. pp.7-8.

6.
See Colin R. Lattimore,

English Nineteenth Century Press-

Moulded Glass
(London, 1979) pp.74-87 and
Class on Wtarside, op.

cit.,
pp.25-30, 40.

7.
This will, proved at the Principal Probate Registry on 12

December 1884, is preserved at Somerset House in the records

for that year.

8.
Reg. No. 113896.
9.

I am indebted to the Jobling-Purser family for these details

and for much kind help in tracing further information.

10.
C.J. Purser-Hope, ‘A Brief History of the Wear Glass

Works’, ournal of the Society of Class Technology,
Vol. XXX (1946),

pp.198-200.

11.
See
PYREX — 60 Years of Design, passim,
and PYREX trade

catalogues from 1927 onwards (Sunderland Museum). Also the
Harrods General Catalogue
for 1929: Glass Department, ‘Pyrex’ the

Wonderful Transparent Ovenware.

12.
Media

Estimates,

February

1938,

in Jobling/

PYREX account files deposited in the History of Advertising

Trust.

13.
e.g. the popular

Be-Ro Cookery Book,
distributed by the

million by Thomas Bell and Son Ltd. of Newcastle,

manufacturers of self-raising flour, went into a sixth edition with
photographic illustrations in 1929, and showed several puddings

cooked in PYREX dishes. At the other end of the scale, the up-
market
Vulcan Cook Book
(Vulcan Stove Co., Exeter, 1936)

showed the PYREX loaf tin, pudding basin, pie plates and
roasting dish in use.

14.
Summary of 28 June 1928 in Jobling/PYREX advertising

account files in the possession of J. Walter Thompson and Co.
Ltd., 40 Berkeley Square, London, W.I.

15.
Pottery and Glass Trade Review,

1 September 1933.

16.
See V. Arwas,

Class: art nouveau to art deco
(London, 1977),

and Philippe Decelle,
Opalescence — Le Verre Moull des Armies

1920-1930
(Brussels, 1987). See also P. Decelle,

Sabino, Maitre

Verrier De L ‘Art Deco 1878-1961, Catalogue Raisonne
(Brussels,

1987).

17.

James A. Jobling and Co. Ltd., Minutes of Executive

Meetings, Volumes I-III, 8 November 1930-26 July 1943

(henceforth abbreviated to JAJM). I am most grateful for

permission to cite these records now in possession of Corning

Ltd., Wear Glass Works, Sunderland. See also note 14 above.

18.
This glass was originally Czechoslovakian, but after 1933,

Clayton Mayer and Co. imported the moulds and arranged for
the glass to be made to order by various manufacturers in the

U.K. See R. Notley,
Pressed Flint Glass
(Shire Publications,

1986), pp.25-28.

19.
Directors’ Memorandum of 4 July 1931, JAJM, Vol. I.

20.
Ibid.

‘
21. See Marc et Marie-Claude Lalique,
Lalique par Lalique

(Lausanne, 1976), C. Vane-Percy,
The Glass of Lalique

(London,

1977), and Nicholas M. Dawes,
Lalique Glass
(London, 1986).

22. Information kindly supplied by Mr. C. Napier-Robson

(Hubert Robson’s son), by Mr. John Hope, and by the late Mr.

Cecil Dobbing.
23.

Information kindly supplied by Monsieur Robert

Franckhauser of SNFR-OMCO, Ingwiller, France.

24.
Cf.

Lalique Glass. The Complete Catalogue for 1932

(Corning

Glass Museum in conjunction with Dover Books, 1981) and

James A. Jobling and Co. Ltd.,
Pressed Glass of Beauty and

Distinction
(Sunderland 1934 and 1937: reproduced in

A Collector’s

Guide to Jobling 1930s Decorative Glass).

25.
Directors’ Memorandum of 4 July 1931, JAJM, Vol. I.

26.
Pottery Gazette and Glass Trade Review,

1 February 1935,

pp.199-200.

27.
Ibid.,

pp.245-8.

28.
Although this design was registered by Jobling at the Patent

Office in London as No 851364 of 12 June, 1947, it now appears

that the mould must have been acquired from the French

company Verlys, in whose catalogue for 1937 it is shown as No.

1097,
Les Orchidies
(reproduced in P. Decelle,

Opalescence,
fig.

62B). I am grateful to Mr. Mark Waller for drawing this point
to my attention.

Figure 2. Enlargement of the coat of arms depicted on the Londonderry

Table Service (Sunderland Museum and Art Gallery).

Figure 1. A cut and engraved armorial honey jar, part

of the Londonderry Table Service made by White,

Young and Tuer of Sunderland in 1824 (Sunderland

Museum and Art Gallery).

Figure 4. Lithograph by M. and M. W. Lambert, Newcastle,

showing James Hartley ‘s- Wear Glass Works and, in the centre

foreground, Greener’s Wear Flint Glass Works, Trimdon Street,

Sunderland, c.1860 (Sunderland Museum and Art Gallery).
Figure 3. Large Sunderland rummer (height 10in.)

showing the Exchange Building built in High Street,
Sunderland in 1814. This glass was made c..1825 by

the Wear Flint Glass Co. of White, Young and Tuer

(Sunderland Museum and Art Gallery).

Pyres hakes brerad

on inch higher

Tin-,
14.
kaves

h
,
ra

made ./ Che

thruzh—onc •rEs 2 mrrs1 pan.

oilltr in 2 Pr.r.
ilt

t
a.ro at It.

11111/

11.1. Py…
Yi

tr.,h

D.< HI , V1,1 ,, ,t 601 Please apply OF pA1liculAI O Ow Latest Designs. mark Jr, Lando‘ +-'*" * • 4 : Figure 5. Blue slag glass cup and saucer made by Henry Greener and Co. c. 1880 (Sunderland Museum and Art Gallery). Figure 7. Ernest Jobling-Purser (1875-1959). Photograph taken in the late 1940s by Baron. Figure 8. Pottery Gazette and Glass Trade Review, vol. 47, January 1922. Advertisement for PYREX ovenware inserted by Trauffler and Co. Figure 6. Shell pattern bowl in clear flint glass by Greener and Co. 6.1888 (Private Collection). Figure 9. Original batch composition for PYREX glassware acquired by Ernest Jobling-Purser in 1921 (Sunderland Museum and Art Gallery). PYITRIaxc F. TRALJFFLER, 49, Hatton Garden. LONDON, E.C.1. So; Repre•ertrative far the E . ,: led Kingd4w 40 41 vcitirWAlts $0.,;‘ ''§eb i sA r fi , OgkegOi;"'f , 'W Figure 10. PYREX soup-plate, stewpot, individual soup pot and ladle (Sunderland Museum and Art Gallery and private collection). Figure 11. Coloured centrefold from the PYREX Cookery Book of 1927, showing range of serving dishes. .1111 11 ...... ... . Figure 12. Blown PYREX tumbler in silver-plated holder, teapot and handled tumbler (Sunderland Museum and Art Gallo)). Figure 13. Oval PYREX casserole dish in E.P.N.S. holder and round casserole with silver knob cover (Sunderland Museum and Art Gallery and private collection). Figure 14. Oval PYREX casserole dish with engraved decoration dating from the 1920s (Sunderland Museum and Art Gallery). Figure 15. Square PYREX casserole dish with cut decoration: this example datemarked 1939 (Sunderland Museum and Art Gallery). OVXSE Pr111,0411UE se,,, A, Figure 19. Lalique catalogue (1932) design no. 1024, vase Petrarque. Figure 16. Top — press moulded clear and blue stained `Willow Pattern' PYREX plates, 6.1934. Bottom - PYREX plate transfer-printed with 'Willow Pattern' design, c.1938 (Sunderland Museum and Art Gallery). Figure 17. Round casserole c.1935 and colour-sprayed oval casserole, datemarked 1938, from the PYREX 'Streamline' range designed by Harold Stabler (Sunderland Museum and Art Gallery and private collection). PLANCHE 37 L aIrZILI.4 J 5 J011 IN AND CO LTD. Figure 20. James A. Jobling and Co., Pressed Glass of Beauty and Distinction (1934), page 3. 3210 DAHLIA 239 mm. Figure 18. Lalique catalogue (1932) design no.3210, coupe Dahlias. 42 395 VASE COQUILLES 300 mm. Figure 21. Lalique catalogue (1932) design no. 385, vase Coquilles. Figure 22. Left, oyster shell pattern bowl (fabling catalogue no. 9000). Centre, fir cone pattern bowl (fobling catalogue no, 5000). Right, flower pattern bowl (fabling catalogue no. 6000): all in `Opalique' glass. • .."•"?.. Figure 23. Lalique catalogue (1932) design nos. 182-3; 214-220. Figure 24. Fish statuette in `Opalique' glass (fabling catalogue no. 10100: private collection). Figure 25. Left, Bird and Corn Vase (fabling catalogue no. B3). Right, Lambton Vase (fabling catalogue no. B.1): both in satin blue glass (private collection). Figure 26. Small bird bowl (fabling catalogue no. 7000) in `Opalique' glass (private collection). 43 • Jo new* Tb., ern P p.. •• nn •. npr•, d.r. • .• SO Ns 77" ht, Leel Figure 27. Small bird bowl (fabling catalogue no. 7000) and Bird and Panel Vase (fabling catalogue no. 11400): both in amber glass (Sunderland Museum and Art Gallery). jtdovei designs in ttractive colours Figure 29. Pottery Gazette and Glass Trade Review, 1 February 1935, page 247. Figure 28. James A. Jobling and Co., Pressed Glass of Beauty and Distinction (1934), page 11. Figure 30. Salad server in flint glass with satin finish handle (fabling catalogue no. 2584; private collection). 44 no' • Figure 32. Blue satin finish rose bawl (fabling catalogue no. 8000), green and amber fircone pattern bowls (fabling catalogue no. 5000), green satin finish statue and block (fabling catalogue no. 2541) and Jade' three-handled bowl on `Jet' plinth (fabling catalogue no. 2077). (Sunderland Museum and Art Gallery). Figure 31. Oyster shell pattern bowl (fabling catalogue no. 9000) in Jade' glass (private collection). Figure 33. Left, Bear statuette (fabling catalogue no. 10730) and right, Lovebirds (Jobling catalogue no. 10200). Height 4in. (10.2cm), both in 'Opalique' glass. 45 THE WINDMILLS: A NOTABLE FAMILY OF GLASS MAKERS by Brian Moody Based on a Paper read to the Circle on 26 June, 1986 The world's first successful machine for making glass containers was invented by James Windmill of Dennis Park, Stourbridge, and patented by him on 29 June 1886) One might therefore expect to find his name among other great pioneers of the 19th century, such as Trevithick, Stephenson and Edison. But the incredible fact is that until recently he had been virtually forgotton by glass historians, most of whom believed that the two main processes were established by Ashley of Ferrybridge in 1887, 2 and Arbogast of Pittsburg, whose idea was first made to work in 1893. There were some very brief references to a Windmill machine in German and American books, but up to 1985 no-one in Great Britain had any idea who Windmill was, or what he did. So after the re-discovery of Windmill's patent, an investigation was made to find out more about this inventor. It is very fortunate that his family name is an unusual one, as this made it possible to trace him and his family much more certainly and further back in time than is usually possible. As a result we now have a fairly complete history of a Staffordshire family who have been glass workers in Stourbridge and elsewhere since some time in the 17th century; it is not impossible that one of them might even have been employed by Paul Tyzack or another of the first Huguenot glass makers in Stourbridge at the beginning of that century. To begin with, they were probably rather lowly craftsmen, but by their efforts some of them achieved a great deal, culminating in this machine invention by a member of perhaps the tenth generation of glass-making Windmills. Wzndmzlls at Rowley Regzs The earliest record of the family is in the parish register at Rowley Regis, near Stourbridge, where a John Windmill is listed as christening his daughter Mary in 1622, and his son John in 1623. Rowley was an old- established agricultural community, 'ROLVEYSTYNE' in the Domesday Book, centred on a hill-top church with a prominent windmill close by, also a Windmill Farm and not far away the village of Windmill End. So it is quite feasible that the Windmills acquired their name because their ancestors had lived or worked at the Rowley mill some centuries earlier. The name Windmill is quite uncommon, and in spite of extensive searches no Windmill families other than the Rowley one have been found anywhere else in England in the early seventeenth century. There were just two other groups with nearly the same name, one being the family of Henrici Windmille who lived at Husborne Crawley near Woburn, and whose descendants later spread widely through the villages of Bedfordshire and neighbouring counties. The others lived at Claverdon near Warwick, only about 20 miles from Rowley, but their name was always spelt with an s and without a d, viz Wynmyls or Winmills. So it is doubtful whether they were related to the Windmills at Rowley, but they may have been connected with the noted London clockmaker Joseph Windmills. Successive generations stayed in Rowley for over 150 years, and seem always to have named the eldest son John. So there were John Windmills christened there in 1623, 1652, 1673, 1709 and 1751, and two others born about 1635 and 1685. Figure 1 shows those parts of the family tree which can be linked together from the incomplete records. Parish records did not usually give occupations, so we cannot be sure what the Windmills did for a living at that time. The reason however for believing that some of the early Windmills were glass makers is that a few of them moved away from Rowley to other glass m a king centres. In 1696 there is a reference to a Charles Windmill living in a glass making district of Bristol, the first time the name appeared in Somerset. And in the 1700's several other Windmills settled in the village of Chelwood, south of Bristol, where there was a glass house which had been started in the previous century by Tyzack himself. Circumstantial though this evidence may be, it does seem that these were Stourbridge craftsmen who had taken their skills elsewhere; in those days 'mobility of labour' was apparently easier than it is today. As for the Windmills who stayed in Rowley, we cannot be sure whether some of them continued in glass, in preference to the other types of job available in the area. But after about 1750 they all left Rowley, possibly because the ragstone quarries advancing from Rowley Hills had swallowed up their home, as they later did the Rowley windmill by the church. The last Rowley entry was of an Elizabeth Windmill being married there in 1759. Unfortunately the available records from Stafford- shire and Worcester seem to be very patchy for the next 50 years; it is likely that some registers have been lost. The next time that the name of Windmill appears was in 1808 at Brierley Hill, when the son of a glass maker was born. Windmills at Brierley Hill Up to about 1750 the main glass making area was concentrated just north of Stourbridge town, in the Amblecote district, where the best pot clay was to be found, but the time was ripe for expansion. The open area of Brierley Hill on the Dudley road was rapidly turning into a new industrial town, and three glass houses were built there. The exact origins of these is not certain, but a recently discovered sources suggests that the first was built on the hill close to the main road from Stourbridge to Dudley, and that the second was founded in 1756 in Moor Lane by Robert Honeyborne, and later became the famous flint house of Stevens and Williams, 46 now known as Royal Brierley Crystal. The third was built close to the second by Robert Honeyborne junior for the manufacture of crown glass, so was presumably the one advertised in the Birmingham Gazette of 3 July 1870 as being a 'manufactory of German sheet and crown glass', established by Honeyborne and Ensell. According to the source quoted, the third glass house was transformed into a bottle manufactory in 1810. It was in fact acquired by Edward Westwood, who was described as a bottle maker, but he owned other properties and businesses as well, and was very much a glass master rather than a practising glass worker, He had various partners at Moor Lane, but the firm was longest known by the name of Westwood and Moore. It is now possible to follow the lives and fortunes of the later Windmills in much greater detail, with the aid of Census returns, Registrars' records, wills and eventually newspaper reports. Information about the first John Windmill at Brierley Hill (1772-1831) comes from his and his wife's burial record at Brierley Hill church. The last four of his six children were also christened there, but records of is own birth and marriage have not been found. We know that he was a bottle blower because this is stated on two of his sons' marriage certificates in 1838 (11 years after their father had died). His father is likely to have been born in the mid-1700's, we may guess in Rowley, so he would have left there soon afterwards, perhaps to became one of the first glass makers working for the Honeybornes. The two eldest sons born at Brierley Hill were miners, and the fourth surviving one became a blacksmith, so it sounds as if their father was not in a position to help them much with their careers. The third son Edward (1808-1868) followed his father's calling, and was a bottle maker all his life at Moor Lane. As it happened, he got married the same year that his mother died, 1829, so it is likely that his bride would have moved into the Windmill home. As we shall see later, she became an important figure in the family progress. Edward must have achieved a significant position in the business, became from them on practically all his sons and grandsons joined the the firm of Westwood and Moore. Of Edward and Lydia Windmill's five sons who reached manhood the eldest William (1829-77) became manager of the works about the time his father died, so perhaps his father had been manager before him. The next son Joseph (1832-54) had very little time as a bottle maker, and died before his own second son was born. Charles (1836-57) and James (1841-64) were also short- lived bottle makers, but the youngest, Richard Alfred (1843-82) lived just long enough to play an important part in the business. Two of the daughters also had connections with glass making, Mary Ann who produced a bottle maker son, and Frances who married a glass cutter. Westwood and Moore The bottle house was strategically sited near to several coal mines, and good communications were provided by the new Dudley Canal, connecting with the Stourbridge Canal. The only trace of the works now remaining is a little branch off the canal where the raw materials would have been delivered and the bottles taken away. The firm was reasonably prosperous in the early part of the 19th century; the 1833 Excise Survey shows that in that year they made something like half a million bottles. For this about six chairs would have been needed, and probably a work force of around 40 to 50. A second factory was started by the Company in London at Paddington Basin, and around the middle of the century they also started making stoneware bottles at Moor Lane. The first Edward Westwood died in 1839 and the company was carried on by his son Edward, born in 1811. To start with, the second owner took a very active part in the work, and lived in Moor Lane, probably in one of the factory houses. But when he married he moved to a fine house in Oldswinford. The pottery side of the business was in the hands of Henry Carder, from a well- known pottery family, and he too lived in Moor Lane, next door to the Windmills. It may be recalled that Henry Carder's brother Caleb had two sons Fred and George who found that pottery did not satisfy their artistic talents, and they joined the glass makers Stevens and Williams. Even the job of chief designer there did not meet with Fred's ambitions, and he went to America in 1902 to become the founder and artistic director of the Steuben Glass Company. (He died in Corning, at the age of 100, in 1963). About 1870 Westwood and Moore severed their connection with the London factory, which continued independently under the name of Davey and Moore. At Brierley Hill they now ran into severe competition from a new plant further along the canal at the Delph, where James Wright had built one of the new Siemens tank furnaces, enabling him to melt bottle glass faster and more economically. There was also increasing 'foreign' competition, which included the bottle makers of Lancashire, where wage rates were lower, and from the crib shops in Stourbridge and Birmingham, where they melted cullet to make cut-price bottles. Edward Westood too may have thought about melting glass in a tank rather than in pots, but it would not have been easy to fit a tank into his site, dominated by the huge 100-year old cone, and now hemmed in by a railway line on each site. (Figure 3 shows a plan of the factory in its later days, with the central glass cone and two adjacent pottery kilns). Apparently he was more interested in the idea of retiring, and passing the business on. He had very progressive ideas for those days, because he looked for successors not only to his sons but also to the Windmills, who had been the mainstay of the factory for so long. Westwood's eldest sons had already embarked on professional careers elsewhere, so he chose his youngest, Charles, born in 1857. The logical partner for Charles Westwood would have been William Windmill, the works manager, but unfortunately he died at just the wrong time, in 1877 at the age of 48. Three of William's brothers in the glass house had also died, and there was only the youngest, Richard Alfred, still alive, working for the firm as a clerk. The outcome was that Charles Westwood and Richard Windmill became the new proprietors, having bought the company with money which Edward Westwood himself lent them. They were to repay this loan and 4% % interest out of the profits. In 1878 their debt was £8,592, and by 1883 it had been reduced to £5,200. So the firm 47 of Westwood and Windmills seemed to be doing quite well, but once again death caused an upset — Richard Windmill died in 1882 at the early age of 38, and Edward Westwood also died in 1885. Richard's share of the business, and of the debt, reverted to young Charles, who must have felt over-burdened with responsibility. Lydia Windmill (1806-85) Before recounting the final chapter in the firm's affairs, it is worth looking at the busy life of Edward Windmill's wife. Lydia Wood was born at Brierley Hill into an important glass family, and when she was quite small they moved to North Staffordshire, as her father was working for the Burslem firm of Davenports, who made pottery and glass. By 1829 she, and possibly her father, had returned, since that was when she married Edward at Kingswinford. In 1841 the Census showed that as well as her own rapidly increasing family, she was providing a home for her father and two of her brothers. Ten years later her father and the younger brother were still with her. By 1871 she was a widow, and three of her sons had died; she was listed as an 'annuitant', so she had her own income, perhaps from her father or her husband. She was now sharing her home with her daughter Frances and her husband, a glass cutter by the name of Isaac Newton. Also she had taken charge of the two boys left by her second son Joseph. She had apprenticed both of them as bottle makers, and the Indenture drawn up for the younger one in 1870 still exists, signed by Lydia as grandmother and guardian, by her son William as works manager, and by Edward Westwood. By the 1881 Census Lydia was 75 years old, but she was still looking after members of the family. Her eldest daughter Mary Ann had been widowed, so she and her 14-year old son Frederick were living with Lydia. Not surprisingly, young Frederick had just started as a bottle maker. The Census returns still fisted Lydia as 'head of the household', and they were obviously right! We cannot but admire her energy and efforts on behalf of the family, which were so often frustrated by early deaths. One can only wonder what part she played in her son Richard's getting a partnership, and it must have been a terrible blow when he died in 1882, the last of her six sons. Mention should also be made of some other members of the Wood family. Lydia's uncle George had three famous sons: John and James went to Barnsley in 1834 to take over a glass factory which they developed into the well-known firm of Wood Brothers of Barnsley. The third son, William Baker Wood, went further afield to Baccarat in France, where the glass makers were trying to get going again after the Napoleonic wars. They had decided to make crystal glass 'in the English fashion', and they succeeded very well with the help of William Baker. He had a good career at Baccarat, and was in charge of their cutting and decorating department. Two of his French- born sons Eugene and Alphonse returned to join their uncles at Barnsley, and they became the next proprietors of Wood Brothers. James Richard Windmill With the death of Richard Alfred Windmill, it was up to the next generation to carry on the family tradition. The eldest of William's sons was Edward (1853-1916), and by 1881 he had become works manager; probably he had taken on the job when his father died. The next was William Charles (1859-1918), working as a bottle maker; James Richard (1862-1934) was a commercial clerk, and soon to become commercial traveller, the equivalent of a modern sales manager. While their uncle was joint owner they must have felt that the destiny of the company was very much in their hands. They were aware that their main competitor's tank furnace enabled him to melt glass more cheaply, but the inventive young James had some ideas for reducing the cost of the glass forming process. Of course youngsters sometimes have rather wild schemes about how to do things better than father did, but his was no immature notion. On the contrary, his plan, conceived without any technical training and little practical experience, was a real stroke of genius. Previous attempts at mechanical bottle making had consisted simply of putting hot glass into a bottle-shaped mould and applying air pressure, but James realised that it would be necessary to reproduce the hand worker's `marvering'. That is the part of the process when the glass gathered on the blowing iron is rolled on a flat slab to cool it and give it a cylindrical shape, with a preliminary puff of air to begin making the cavity. So his bottle making was to be done in two stages, with one mould for 'marvering' and another for final blowing. He also had the very practical ideas of fitting the two moulds one inside the other, and using a tapered plunger instead of air to start the cavity. James and his brothers were keen to try out his idea, but sadly by now uncle Richard had died, and Charles Westwood was struggling to keep the business going, so he was unable or unwilling to spend anything on develop- ment. But James was not to be put off, and he borrowed f100 fom the friendly manager of the Midland Bank at Brierley Hill, so that he could have a prototype machine built. There is no doubt that this machine worked well, because several others later copied it, but there is no record of its being used commercially at Moor Lane. Within a few years Charles Westwood gave up trying to run the business, and in 1890 he sold out to his rival James Wright. All glass making was transferred to the Delph plant, and Moor Lane continued for a few years with stoneware bottles only. James Windmill nevertheless patented his process in 1886, and it was the world's only workable process until Ashley in Yorkshire managed to work out an alternative two-stage system a year later. The essence of the Windmill machine is shown in Figure 4, taken from the patent. This shows the two moulds a and b in their telescoped position, with the glass hollowed out by the plunger k. Then a catch was released and the inner mould fell down out of the way. The plunger was withdrawn and replaced with the blowing head p in order to blow the glass out to the shape of the outer mould. The text of the patent was remarkably clear and realistic, and leaves no doubt that it was written by someone who had really proved the machine in practice. It was a great irony that Westwood's firm should fade out just when they had such an innovation in their grasp. In the event the Windmill machine was soon taken up by 48 others, the first being Dan Rylands of Barnsley, a most colourful character in the glass industry. Windmill machines at work Dan Rylands' father had started a glass works in Barnsley in 1867, and formed a partnership with Hiram Codd, the inventor of the famous marble-stoppered bottle. Dan took over when his father died, and he expanded and diversified with breath-taking speed and ruthless energy. He was bursting with ideas for new products, some very realistic and successful, and some less so — like his 1887 patent for glass railway sleepers! His factory expanded at least ten-fold, and he became sufficiently wealthy to acquire other local enterprises, including a quarry, a brickworks and a coalmine, not to mention a country estate and a grouse moor. He was obviously in a different league from Westwood and Moore! He also patented many improvements in glass making, mainly in relation to the complicated Codd bottle, and in all he had his name on 48 manufacturing patents. He was trying very hard to develop a machine for making Codd bottles, without success, and he must have felt pipped on the post when Windmill's and then Ashley's patents were published. So he hurriedly bought from James Windmill the rights of his machine, then submitted a patent application in 1888 for the `Rylands' machine, said to be capable of making Codd bottles. It was actually a Windmill machine, expanded to a rotary version with 8 heads. Following a public demonstration, with a single head machine working at 6 bottles a minute, Rylands was able to raise £50,000, to build a factory to exploit the machine. He now claimed that he owned the original patent for a bottle-making machine, which was true, and that Ashley had copied him, which was certainly not true. In 1980 he sued Ashley for infringement,' and enlisted - or probably conscripted — James Windmill as a co- plaintiff. The Court soon established that the two machines were quite different. Ashley's being more suitable for narrow-neck bottles and Windmill's for jars. After an adjournment the case was apparently abandoned. Progress with the new machine and factory was rather slower than the shareholders might have wished for, but the reasons turned out to be financial rather than technical. Rylands had sunk most of his capital into his coalmine, but very little coal came out. Suddenly in 1893 he was made bankrupt, with debts of £300,000. The Rylands glass works however was not involved in the bankruptcy, and carried on successfully without Dan until 1927. And they made good use of their Windmill machines, with the help of James Windmill's brother Edward. There is in existence a detailed Government report of 1916, 5 saying that the Windmill machines worked twice as fast as the other types. Other developments from the Windmill machine From then on, many other Windmill-type machines were developed, with or without licence, both in Europe and the USA. The first was by an American in 1896, Charles Blue of Wheeling, West Virginia; he produced a machine which was widely used in the USA for making fruit jars, followed by Kilner Brothers in England. Figure 5 shows an improved Blue machine of about 1900, which is the nearest we can get to knowing what the first Windmill machine looked like. The improvements put five moulds on to a rotating table, and used pneumatic pistons to move the plunger and the inner mould. In Europe also Schiller of Cologne supplied smaller Windmill-type machines from 1906. The method of sliding one mould inside the other was eventually given up, but modern machines for making jars and wide-mouth bottles still use a plunger to press the parison, just as Windmill did. Windmills in the 20th century James and his brothers would have seen the writing on the wall for Westwoods, and may have left them before they closed in 1891. Edward, as already explained, moved to Barnsley and spent the rest of his life working with the Rylands company. William Charles went to St Helens, and worked there for Cannington and Shaw. They had been one of the first to use Ashley machines, and some of these were fitted with plungers to make jars, possibly with his help. The only one of the Windmill brothers not involved in bottle making was the youngest, Ernest Henry (1870-1931). Instead, he was apprenticed to next-door Stevens and Williams, and he was a talented pupil at the Stourbridge School of Art, competing successfully for prizes with the famous John Northwood, son of the even more famous glass artist who reproduced the Portland Vase in glass. Ernest then worked for most of his life with Webb and Corbett. He had a childhood sweetheart, Rose Overton, but she was persuaded to emigrate to America, and there she married John Northwood's nephew Clarence, who was working in glass at Wheeling (where Blue built his Windmill machine!). When however Clarence died Rose promptly returned to England and married Ernest in 1920. These few bare facts are all we know of what may be a very romantic story. Then there were the two orphans brought up by Lydia Windmill, James and Joseph. Joseph had a long career in glass and other jobs, and died in 1931. He had three sons, of whom the youngest, Walter, is remembered for his intaglio work at Stevens and Williams. An older brother, George, also went there, and he got himself into the local newspaper at the age of 16, when he 'entertained' the annual works outing. But the best-known son was Joseph William (1881-1927). He was a Stourbridge schoolmaster, and was also a member of Aston Villa's football team which won the FA Cup in 1905. He was decorated for gallantry in the Great War, serving as Regimental Sargeant Major of the 16th Warwicks. As for our main character, James Windmill, he transferred his skills as commercial traveller to Cannington Shaw, and he evidently did very well. He set up a sales office in Birmingham, and covered a wide area as far as the Isle of Man. He was devoted to his family, and ensured that they all had the best possible education. Most of them have had very successful careers in various professions — but none in glass. It is remarkably fortunate that James' youngest daughter Helen, born in 1903, is still alive today, as she has been able to provide many details of her father's career. Figure 6 is a photo- 49 graph of James and his family, on his silver wedding anniversary in 1910. Helen is in the centre of the group. James' career was sadly cut short by illness, and eventually he died at Solihull in 1934. By then his part in glass history had already been forgotten by most people, and it has taken another fifty years to resurrect it. 1. Windmill, J.R. (29 June 1886), Brit. Pat. 8526. 2. Ashley, H.M. (1 March 1887), Brit. Pat. 3434. 3. Anon, The Advertiser (Brierley Hill), 15 April 1865, 'The History of Brierley Hill'. 4. Rylands vs Ashley's Patent (Machine Made) Bottle Co., (1890), Reports of Patent Cases, 7, 175. 5. Meigh, E. (September 1916), Report to Ministry of Munitions. John Windmill — 1 I Mary John — Eleanor 1622- 1623- 1 '72 John — Abigail Westwood Jeremiah Joyce 1652-90 I 1662- 1664- I '01 Mary John — Jane Forest 1677- 1673-1743 1 1 Alice Elizabeth 1671- 1673- Joseph 1703- 1 1 I Hannah Sarah Amey John ? James — Elizabeth Humfry 1702- 1704- 1707-30 1709-57 1712-56 I 1721-28 John 1751- 1 Joseph 1753- Figure 1. Some Windmills at Rowley Regis JOHN WINDMILL — Anne 1772-1831 I 1783-1829 Jane William 1715- 1719-22 James 1813-15 George Robert — Mary Caper, '16, 7 children — Ann Wood, '38 1 '29 Edward — Lydia Wood 1808-68 1806-85 I ' 38 William Sarah 1816- Charles 1822- William 1839-40 I '61 JOHN — Mary 1841- 1 '.51 I I I I WILLIAM — Mary JOSEPH — Maria Mary Anne — liallehurch CHARLES Edward 1829-77 1 1832-54 I :8 3 4- I 1836-57 1838 , 19 1 JAMES E. — Elizabeth JOSEPH — Julia FREDERICK 1854 1855-1 931 1867. 1 I JAMES RICHARD A. — Kate Frances•Isaac Newton 1841-64 1843-82 1846- '85 1 '20 Kezia Lydia EDWARD — Elizabeth infant Mary WILLIAM C. JAMES R. — Annie Frances Florence Ernest H. — Rose Northwood 1851- 1853-1916 1855 1857-1915 1859-1918 1862-1934 I 1364- 1865 1870-1931 Helen 1903- Figure 2. Windmills at Brierley Hill (Names in capitals indicate bottle makers) 50 • • • • '`, ; ' ,..>.:;,

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53

JOSEPH LOCKE AND HIS THREE CAREERS IN

ENGLAND AND AMERICA

by Juliette K. Rakow and Dr. Leonard S. Rakow

A Paper read to the Circle on 13 November, 1986

Joseph Locke was an extraordinary glass artist who
combined the skills of glass decorator, glass maker and

inventor. His outstanding artistic ability was recognized

in England and in the United States, in both of which

countries he spent his working years. His fame as a cameo
artist in England is well recognized. In the United States

he worked for the major glass companies to develop new

and popular forms of art glass and was also an inventor
of importance. In the final years of his long life, he

concentrated on etching glass in his own studio in Mt.

Oliver, Pennsylvania.
Joseph Locke was born on August 21, 1846, in

Worcester, England.’ He was the son of Edward Locke

of the famous family of potters. Joseph’s parents died
while he was still a child, and his step-brother, Edward

Locke, a designer and decorator at the Royal Worcester

China Pottery, helped to rear him and undoubtedly
influenced Joseph’s apprenticeship to that factory at the

age of twelve. At Worcester, Joseph Locke received

instruction from leading English painters and, at the age
of nineteen, won a prize design competition for a fireplace

to be built in the palace of the Czar of Russia. Guest

Brothers, who were Stourbridge glass etchers and

decorators, had instituted the competition, and Locke left
the Royal Worcester China Factory without completing

his apprenticeship to enter the employ of the Guest
Brothers. It was there that he developed his interests in

glass etching and decorating. His experiments with a

variety of resist materials, acid mixtures and cutting and
polishing instruments developed the skill and artistry

which were to bring him fame. Although he married into

the Guest family, this did not stop him from leaving their

employ and joining the firm of Hodgetts, Richardson &

Sons, which excelled in the development of etched and
engraved glass. It was there that he came under the

influence of Alphonse Lechevrel.
Richardson, from whom Locke worked, was head of a

large glass factory, the Henry G. Richardson & Sons

Wordsley Flint Glass Factory. Richardson was an

innovative leader in the glass industry. He would

frequently bring a Wedgwood copy of the Portland Vase
to the shop to show his artists and advise them that it

would be worth 1,000 pounds to any one who could make

a replica in glass.
Two of Richardson’s former employees did just that.

Philip Pargeter had the blank made and John Northwood

carved a cameo glass replica of the Portland Vase which
was completed in 1876.
2

Richardson was quick to realize

the impact that this would have on the Stourbridge glass

industry. In order to keep his own production

competitive, he searched for some one who could provide
instruction in this new art form.
In France, in the person of Alphonse Lechevre1,

3
he

found his man. No English publication has ever

ascertained Lechevrel’s background or position. We

derived the following from information recorded in

French texts.
4

Lechevrel at that time was already a

member of the Societe des Artistes Francais, and had

achieved fame as a gem carver and medallist and won
medals and honorable mention at many exhibitions. He

was a pupil of Henri Louis Francois, the well-known and

famous gem carver and medallist.
Richardson brought Lechevrel to England in 1877, and

Lechevrel remained at Richardson’s for the years 1877

and 1878, providing instruction in cameo glass technique.
Later, when he returned to France, he continued to excel

in his field, creating numerous glyptic masterpieces, one

of which was a cameo of George Washington in carnelian,

after C. Webb.

Not only was Alphonse Lechevrel Joseph’s mentor, but

he was a great influence on glass artists when he returned
to France. Charles Schneider became one of his pupils.

Locke became Lechevrel’s most important pupil at

Richardson’s and quickly developed skills equal to those

of his instructor.

Joseph Locke’s earliest claim to fame lay in his pro-

duction of figural cameo glass. Beginning with his
employment at Guest Brothers, he had developed great

skill in etching and carving. Later, at Hodgetts,
Richardson & Sons, under the tutelage of Lechevrel, he

applied those skills to the making of cameo glass, which

had been given such a profound impetus by Northwood’s
cameo glass replica of the Portland Vase in 1876.

By 1878, Locke had also made a cameo glass replica of

the Portland Vase which was exhibited at the Paris

Universal Exposition of 1878. Shown at the Paris
Exposition in a not quite complete state (the figures
required a bit more thinning down), the replica

nevertheless earned an award of a silver medal for
`Hodgetts, Richardson & Fils.’ Locke never did complete

the thinning of the figures, as a dispute caused him to

leave the employ of Hodgetts, Richardson & Sons. The

obverse of the vase is shown in figure 1. It was one of only
two full size replicas of the glass Portland Vase that had

been made in cameo glass in 2,000 years.
History informs us that of the forty blanks made for

him for this opus, only two survived their annealing or

initial attempt at carving. One of these was successfully

carved and the other blank has always travelled with

Locke’s Portland. About one half year after we acquired

the Locke Portland, the seller offered us the blank. When

we asked why he had not offered it to us at the time of the

original purchase, he replied: ‘That is how it was sold to
I ‘

nne..

The story of the two remaining blanks, of which one

was finally carved, has been repeatedly published by
many authors in differing forms. However, we were

informed by Horace E. Richardson, whose recent death
was a loss to us all, that when he joined the Richardson

Company in 1926, there were still a dozen existing
blanks. He did not know what became of them, but he did
recall that he and his brother gave one of the blanks to the

former Brierley Hill Library Glass Museum.

Figure 2 is Joseph Locke’s photograph on his card of

admission to the Paris Exposition in 1878, when he was

32 years old. On the back of the picture
is

stated in

French that it was issued to Joseph Locke of Hodgetts,

Richardson et Fils of England for admission to the

Universal Exposition of 1878 in Paris. This is from the

collection of Mrs. Jack M. Evans of Brandon, Florida,

granddaughter of Joseph Locke. A photograph of the
Hodgetts, Richardson & Sons exhibit at the Paris
Exposition of 1878 is shown in figure 3. Amazingly, even

though Lechevrel had arrived at Hodgetts, Richardson &

Sons only the year before, in 1877, sixteen figural cameo
vases are identifiable in the 1878 exhibit. Of these Horace

Richardson identified 15 and we identified the 16th. Of

these, seven can be attributed to Lechevrel. Lechevrel

having been Locke’s tutor, it is therefore conceivable that

there should be similarities in their style of relief carving.

Two cameo vases (figure 4) were carved by Alphonse

Lechevrel, and when shown at the Paris Universal

Exposition in 1878, had handles. Later, the handles were

ground off, as well as Lechevrel’s initials, and George

Woodall’s name was engraved on them. On ours, ‘The
Birth of Venus’ we were able to find the spot where the

A.L. had been ground off. On the Broadfield House vase
‘Venus Rising From The Sea’ there were two AL

signatures and only one was ground off. Of the remaining
nine vases in the Paris Exposition, four can be definitely
identified as the work of Joseph Locke by his signature or

by his initials.
Two charming vases, ‘The Happy and The Unhappy

Child’ (figure 5) by Locke are taken from the sculptures
of the Belgian, Louis Eugen Simons. The vases are in the

Chrysler Museum, Norfolk, Va. Of interest here is the
fact that Lechevrel, after his return to France, executed

a rock crystal intaglio titled ‘Jean Qui Pleure et Jean Qui
Rit.’
5
It may be that Lechevrel stimulated Locke’s

design of these two vases.
On his Portland Vase replica Locke had engraved

‘Joseph Locke, Wordsley, 1878’ in block letters with

serifs on only the first V. On ‘The Happy Child’ he had

engraved the initials JL entwined as he had done on most

of his other pieces. It is of interest to note that the
companion cameo vase, ‘The Unhappy Child’, which

was also in the Exposition in Paris, not only bears the

same initial signature, but it is followed by the date 1877
(figure 6), which would indicate that it was completed the
year before the exhibit.
‘Cupid On A Cockleshell’
.
(figure 7), present on the

stand in the 1878 Paris Exposition, had not been on
public exhibition since it was shown by the Richardson

Company at the opening of the Wordsley New School of
Art in 1899, until it was located in the possession of

Horace Richardson and loaned for the Exhibition of

Ancient and Modern Cameo Glass at the Corning
Museum of Glass in 1982, eighty-three years later. This

vase also has the entwined JL initials engraved in the

opal.
The remaining five cameo glass vases are considered to

have been done by Locke, but could have been done by

either man. The whereabouts of these five is unknown.

They are approximately nine inches tall. They are

probably signed as all the known vases are signed.

However, we do not know if this is so. We do have old
photographs of all of them, which reveal the shape and

decoration. They are as follows: ‘Cupid’ (figure 8).
However, this has a decoration on the neck and foot of the
vase which is more characteristic of Lechevrel. Locke’s

vases are not usually decorated in this fashion: ‘The

Zephyr’ (figure 9) is thought to have been done by Locke:
‘Two Boys on an Eagle’ (figure 10) and ‘Two Boy

Musicians’ (figure
1 1 )
are attributed to Locke by other

authorities as well: ‘Two Boys at Play’ (figure 12) is also
felt to be by Locke. If one can find any of them, initials

or no, one will have found a small fortune.

There is in existence one very interesting unfinished

vase which reveals two children embracing on the back of
a panther (figure 13). In addition, there are two children
behind them standing in front of the panther. These two

children are similar to those of the ‘Two Boys at Play’ on
the vase in figure 12. This vase demonstrates an un-

successful attempt to grind off the upper part of the two
additional boy figures, as can be seen in a detail view

(figure 13a). The legs of the children are still present
below the panther. The vase with its neck and foot

decoration is very much in the style of Lechevrel, as is the

panter’s head, which can be seen on one of his other

vases. It may be that the vase with the identical ‘Boys at

Play’ figures is also by Lechevrel. You can understand

our dilemma in positively ascribing the maker of each of
the five missing vases. The styles are so similar.

When one considers that J. Locke’s carving of figural

cameo glass was done in the years between 1877 and
1878, it represents a tremendous production for one man.

This is especially so since he was reported
to
have worked

full time for one year on his replica of the Portland Vase.

One might assume that Locke had developed some skill
in relief carving even before Lechevrel arrived.

In addition to the vases already mentioned, there are

two small cameo medallions (figure 14 and figure
14a),

each one and a half inches in length with a carved opaque-
white classical head on a rose-beige background. They

are mirror images, with enough slight differences in their
carving to leave no doubt that they are two distinct

cameos. The one on the left, unfortunately, was stolen
from the Locke Collection at Alfred University, Alfred,

N.Y., where it was presented in 1936 by Prof. Alexander

Silverman.
G

The one at the right is in our collection and

has a somewhat more elaborate form of the entwined JL

engraved on the reverse. While we cannot provide the

signature on the missing cameo, we feel that both of these

mirror image cameos done in the same style on similarly

coloured blanks of the same size were carved by Joseph
Locke, either in the United States or England.

There is also in the Silverman Collection at Alfred

University a beautifully carved head of Shakespeare in

white opal.? This unsigned portrait of Shakespeare,
though carved in relief, was not carved from two layers

of differently coloured cased glass, but was affixed to a

ruby glass backing, and therefore does not qualify as true

cameo glass. This fine piece may still be seen at Alfred
University. This also may have been carved either in
England or the United States.

In 1879 a dispute resulted in Locke leaving the employ

of Hodgetts, Richardson & Sons. His restless nature sent

him first to work for Webb Corbett, then Pargeter and
finally to Stuart & Sons. His son, Edward, was

supposedly employed with him at both these latter

companies. We know of no figural cameo glass

production by Locke for Hodgetts, Richardson & Sons,

for Webb Corbett, for Pargeter or for Stuart & Sons after

the Paris Exposition of 1878 and before he left for the

United States in 1882.
There has always been some confusion as to how Locke

spent his time after leaving Richardson and before

coming to America. He is reputed to have worked for
Webb & Corbett and for Pargeter. We have thus far
found nothing relative to Webb & Corbett, but we have

found evidence that he worked for Pargeter and for Stuart

& Sons. In recent researches we have discovered that,
after Stuart & Sons purchased the Redhouse Works from

Pargeter in 1881, there are 24 sketches by Joseph Locke

in the design books for 1881-1882.
8

They range from

lady tennis players through floral designs to Jumbo, the
elephant. Of some interest is the illustrated sketch

showing lady tennis players (figure 15). Many years later,
in America, Joseph Locke made use of that sketch in

etching his drinking glasses. Locke’s name is present in
three places on that sketch as well as dates for January

and February of 1882.

A number of foliate decorated cameo vases, both in

England and America, have been attributed to Locke.

Such identification is debatable. There are three beautiful

cameo floral vases in England, in the possession of
members of the Richardson family, that are attributed to

Locke. Two are lovely tricolours, with the floral heads in
blue and the leaves and stems in white on a raisin-

coloured base. In Richardson’s shape and design book’
No. 10274 ‘Gloxinia’ was one of their regular production

numbers and is one of those in the Richardson family

group. Another of the three can be seen in the shape book

and can also be identified as a production number. Their
attribution to Locke is probably wishful thinking as these
were regular production pieces.

There are in the United States two cameo vases with

floral designs that are attributed to Locke. The one in the

Toledo Museum of Art is unsigned and has been there

since the 1950’s. It was thought to have been made in the

United States. It is of a Richardson shape. We would

consider this to be an English blank. It would be
extremely unlikely that Locke would order the blank, set

up the complicated hydrofluoric acid apparatus to remove

the excess outer layer of the cased glass and assemble the

tools for a single cameo relief-carved vase. We think this
to be a good example of English cameo commercial

production. A foliate carved cameo vase was acquired by

the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston in the past decade. It

is difficult to determine where the blank was made. The
relief carving is of average quality. Lightly scratched on

the base is the J. Locke signature seen on Locke’s art

glass. It is probably the only occasion on which Locke
ever signed his name on the bottom of an article, if indeed

it was done by him. Locke etched his signature on the side

of his American creations. This would also be the only

occasion that he ever scratched it on. We therefore
question its authenticity. We qualify that slightly. On the

birthday of one of his grandchildren Locke once scratched

the birth date and the time on one of his etched glasses.

He was quite old at the time and he scratched the date
twice. The family does not know why he put in the time
unless it was the time of the birth. More likely his mind

wandered a bit, and he just followed the date with the
time.
The Boston and Sandwich Company had offered Locke

a position in Sandwich on Cape Cod. They sent a
representative to New York to meet him, but he landed

in Boston. The New England Glass Company, learning

of this, sent their representative to the ship and signed
him up before the Boston and Sandwich Company could

get to him.

Locke had been in America less than a year when, in

1884, he sent to England for his wife and nine children.

A tenth child was born in the United States. Edward
Locke, one of his sons, recalled the family being driven

to Dudley with a wagon-load of home furnishings under

the supervision of his grandfather, who also accompanied

them to Liverpool. They sailed on the
Marathon,
a Cunard

liner, in two cabins as first class passengers. They landed

in Boston in midwinter. Five to a cabin must have been

somewhat crowded, even first class.
William L. Libbey, who owned the New England Glass

Company, began his career by leasing the Mount

Washington Glass Works with Timothy Howe in 1860.
On Howe’s death in 1866, Libbey acquired his interest.
In 1869, Libbey purchased the New Bedford Glass

Company and moved his operation there. In 1871 the
Mount Washington Glass Company was incorporated

and in 1872, W.L. Libbey left to become the managing
director of the New England Glass Company, which was

later leased to him in 1878. His son, Edward Drummond
Libbey, became a partner in 1880 and the firm’s name
became ‘The New England Glass Works, W.L. Libbey
and Son, Proprietors.’ Upon the death of W.L. Libbey in

1883 Edward D. Libbey, at the age of 29, took over the

firm, and successfully guided it through repeated
financial crises.
10

The survival of the factory was aided by Joseph Locke’s

art glass inventions. The New England Glass Company

was closed in 1888 and moved to Toledo, Ohio, where
natural gas was abundantly available, and where the city

fathers provided Libbey with a four-acre factory site and

fifty lots for workers to build homes — all by public

subscription. A story in the
Toledo Daily Blade
of August

18, 1888, reported the arrival of 250 workers and their
families and the arrival of 50 carloads of machinery that
had been shipped from Boston. Before the move E.D.

Libbey incorporated the company as W.L. Libbey & Son

Co. In 1892 the name was changed to the Libbey Glass

Company. Joseph Locke became the first superintendent
of Libbey’s Toledo, Ohio, plant in 1888.

During his association with Libbey at the New England

Glass Company and at Libbey’s Toledo, Ohio, plant,

Locke developed many patents for art glass which were

assigned to Libbey. The best known in addition to his

Amberina, 1883, are Pomona, 1885; Plated Amberina,

1886; Peachblow or Wild Rose, 1886; Agata, 1887; and

Maize, 1889. Amberina was the first of Locke’s art glass

inventions for the New England Glass Company and was

patented on 24 July, 1883. It was not immediately

popular and a large stock accumulated in the warehouse.
Mr Libbey, needing funds, took a few pieces to his best

customer, Mr Tiffany, in New York. The buyer for

Tiffany’s offered to purchase the entire stock and

Amberina captured the public’s fancy and helped the
company regain its solvency.

Amberina was made by heat-treating a special gold

glass to which was added a yellow colouring agent. With

heat treatment, the glass struck red, and by proper

manipulation the ruby colour gradually blended into a

yellowish amber. Amberina was used for table ware,

sugar and creamers, salt and pepper shakers, bowls,
tumblers, jugs and covered butter dishes being amongst

the items listed on an early price list. In some instances

Amberina was enhanced by mould-blown fluting or

diamond patterns. The making of Amberina was revived
by the Libbey Glass Company of Toledo about 1917 for

approximately two years. Most of this limited production

is marked `Libbey’ in script on the pontil so that it will

not be mistaken for the earlier production, or by

imitations from other countries. Most signatures of the

1917 Amberina included the Libbey name in a circle with
`Amberina’ written above. Some pieces do not have the

name Amberina above.

Pomona is of a clear delicate glass with an etched

ground, frequently ornamented with colour-stained

garlands of flowers and fruits. Pomona was made with

two grounds. The first is made of fine lines and etched,

the second is made by applying an acid resist powder

which produces a stippled effect. A second patent for this

second ground was taken out by Locke on 15 June 1886,
and was also assigned to E.D. Libbey. The second

ground gave the same effect and reduced the cost of

production.
Plated Amberina, a variation of Amberina, combines

the original metal with opalescent glass to form pieces on

which the Amberina colouring appears as a coating over

the opalescent lining. This had somewhat limited
production and fine specimens are desirable.

Wild Rose, sometimes called Peachblow, was patented

in 1886 by Edward D. Libbey, although Locke probably
had some part in the development. Locke’s name is not

included in the patent, perhaps because the company had

experimented with the glass some years earlier. The glass

shaded from almost white to rose and was made with
either a man or a glossy finish. The 1886 patent was

originally known as Peachblow, but the Mount

Washington Company’s claim to the name was approved

by the courts, forcing Libbey to rename it Wild Rose.
On 28 January, 1887, Locke patented a variation of

Wild Rose called Agata. This technique involved coating

Wild Rose objects with a metallic stain or mineral

colouring, then spotting them with a volatile liquid which
would evaporate, leaving a mottled surface on the glass.
This ware was produced for less than a year after the

factory moved to Toledo.
The last of the Locke patents for Libbey art glass was

granted on 10 September, 1889. This was a patent for the
design of Maize glass and was issued after the company

had moved to Toledo, although it had been made for a

short time in Cambridge. The cream color is said to have

been made at Cambridge and the white in Toledo.

Opaque white or cream, the simulated ears of corn had

the colour of the husks applied. Figure 16 is an advertise-

ment from
The Pottery and Glassware Reporter
of July, 1889,

which offers a sample package. A number of pieces are

illustrated.

In 1891 Locke left Toledo and started a business of his

own in Pittsburgh. He was not a good business manager

and his company did poorly.
Daniel Ripley, President of a newly formed glass

company, The United States Glass Company, invited
Locke to become head designer and consultant. At the

same time Locke maintained a workshop in his own home

where he decorated glass with etching, engraving and

enamelling, using the name Locke Art Glass Company.

After he retired from The United States Glass Company
he continued working in his home on Carl Street in Mt.

Oliver, Pa.

It was while he was with The United States Glass

Company that he developed his wire glass in conjunction
with J.A. Croskey. The glass contained wire mesh, like

chicken wire, in which the wires were covered with

asbestos. It was known as `Besto’ glass and was manu-
factured by the David Glass Company of Pittsburgh.
Locke’s fertile brain produced many inventions which

were patented in his own name and with others, as well
as in the name of the companies for which he worked.

The full count has not yet been made. They include a

wide variety of items from the art glass already mentioned
to mechanical means of etching and stippling glass with

acid materials, as well as metallizing and designing glass.
He devised and patented a machine for mechanically

indenting convex or spherical glass. He patented at least
three types of apparatus for making and burning gaseous

fuel. He also patented methods for pressing glassware and

for making hollow glass articles, and devised methods of
making glass underground conductors as well as electric

wire insulators of glass. He was the first to frost incan-

descent lamp bulbs, and he also designed some carbon
filament lamps of which sketches existed among his
papers. After 1896, no further patents are listed. His

invention of wire glass provided him with enough return

to allow him to stop working for others.

Robert J. Williamson, a grandson of Joseph Locke, has

found a logo which Croskey and Locke used to identify
their work together. The crossed keys, of course,
represent Croskey, and the lock below represents J.

Locke (figure 17). Very clever!

Unfortunately, a fire in his first shop in Pennsylvania,

about 1906, destroyed the shop and most of his records,

resulting in the loss of his formulae for his resists, etching

fluids and glass batches. It appears that he did not record
these again after the fire.

Joseph Locke devoted the last forty years of his life to

painting, sculpting, engraving and etching in his own

studio. He painted
in
watercolour and oils, his favourite

subjects being still life, fruits and flowers, and woodland

scenes. These paintings filled his home. He also did
copper and steel-plate etchings.
His still life of grapes and leaves is an excellent example

of his painting talent. Some people considered that this

was what he did best (figure 18). Although Locke’s
painting ability may not have been of the greatest, it was

of superior quality and unusual in a man whose technical

skills were in the carving and etching of glass. He did not

copy the designs and paintings of others, but translated
his artistic ability to his decorative etching of glass.

From the time Locke opened his shop in 1891, even while

he acted as head designer and consultant for the United

States Glass Co., and continued to work with Croskey and
others on new glass industry inventions, he began his last
major endeavour which was the etching of glass.

At first he etched blanks for shops, and occasionally for

private families. As he became older he completely

immersed himself in the work he had begun more than a

half century earlier at Guest Brothers. There he had
acquired the art and craft of glass etching. The glass had

first to be coated with an acid resist which consisted of
paraffin, bee’s wax, fat or other similar material. Gums

and solvents thickened and thinned the resist. Different

formulae were required for different effects. We referred

earlier to his use of an acid resist powder to produce a

stippling effect in his second ground for Pomona. His

knowledge of resist materials was further enlarged by his

own inventiveness as well as by his chemical

understanding of the action of hydrofluoric and sulphuric

acids on glass. By adding salts, starches and glues, he
could thicken his acids and produce finishes which ran
from shiny to matt. John Northwood, many years before,

had demonstrated this method, which allowed broad

surfaces to be rendered matt without the necessity of
tedious crosshatching.

Locke’s instruments consisted of steel needles and

sharp and dull sticks which permitted him to remove the
resist and achieve thin lines or broad areas to allow for

acid action. He combined varieties of chemical mixtures

and techniques to achieve the many clear and coloured
fine effects that can be found on his etched glass.
Each object was decorated with a design made from

one of his own freehand sketches. His use of a template
came only when he did complete services with the same

design. His ingenious decorations came from a wide
interest in natural subjects such as flowers, fruits, leaves,
fish, birds and animals. Classical, mythological, biblical

and even children’s stories found their way on to his
etched glass.
John Locke, another of Locke’s grandchildren, has an

early catalogue put out by the Locke Art Glass Co. which

contains a large number of shapes and designs, and which

he plans to have published in the near future. There is

one group of sporting scenes which includes ladies playing
tennis and golf. Figures 19 to 24, provide only a small
sample of the great variety of etched designs by the Locke

Art Glass Co. All were original creations of Joseph Locke
and probably represent a return to his early interests at
Guest Brothers. Figure 19, the lady golfer, is part of a

series that included the lady tennis player. Figure 20 is of

stylized Egyptian figures reminiscent of Fereday’s etched
glass Egyptian service for the Queen. Figure 21 reveals a

life-like decoration of a lobster on a bowl. Figure 22 is a
graceful sailing boat. Figure 23 depicts a lovely poinsettia

on a vase that would make a beautiful Christmas gift, if
you could find one. Figure 24 is his favourite Bacchus

design of grapes and grape leaves.

Locke signed his glass ‘Locke Art’. Etched signatures

are found on a great number of his pieces. They are
frequently worked into the design so that they are some-

what difficult to find. The Locke name is almost

invariably in upper case with the horizontal line or the L

extending under the letter 0 (figure 25). Some of the
more involved pieces are signed ‘J. Locke’ or ‘Jo Locke’.

Locke frequently included his signature so that it

appeared to be a vine tendril.
Circular labels on which is printed ‘Locke Art Glass,

Mt. Oliver’ are rarely found on his pieces today. One

such label is shown on a wine glass in figure 26.
Today many museums in America boast of one or

more of Joseph Locke’s etched pieces. There are two
public collections. One is at the Historical Society of

Western Pennsylvania Museum in Pittsburgh, Pa., and

another is in the Dr. Alexander Silverman Collection at
the New York State College of Ceramics at Alfred

University.
The last picture of Locke (figure 27), taken at the age

of 90 was snapped in 1936, the year he died. It was taken
with a Brownie camera by his grandson, Robert J.

Williamson, whose mother, Nora, was one of Locke’s
daughters.
This master glass maker, artist, craftsman and inventor

lived a long and full life which was divided into three
remarkable careers in two countries. He first achieved

fame as a cameo glass carver in England, leaving there in

1882. Second, in America, he was known for his

inventions and creations of many forms of art glass and
for a multitude of inventions, between 1882 and 1891,
relating to glass and its production. Finally, in the last

years of his life, from 1891 to 1936, he turned to his third

and final glory, that of a great glass-etcher. He combined

in one person the triple achievement of becoming a glass

sculptor whose figural cameo glass brought him early

fame and recognition; an inventor of industrial aids for
the glass industry, as well as many types of art glass which

are eagerly sought by museums and collectors; and finally

a great master glass-etcher and engraver.

Beard, Geoffrey W.
Nineteenth Century Cameo Class,

Newport,

England. (1956), pp.55-62.

2.
Rakow, Leonard S. & Juliette K. ‘The Cameo Glass of John

Northwood I’,
Antiques

Magazine,
(July, 1982). pp.112-115.

3.
Revi, Albert Christian
Nineteenth Century Glass, Its Genesis and

Development,
Thomas Nelson & Sons (Revised Edition, 1967),

pp.145-151.

4, Forrer, L.
Biographical Dictionary of Medallists,
(1907), v.III,

pp.357, 358 and 362.

5.
Auvray, Louis
Dictionnaire General des Artistes de !Role

Francaise,
(1882), v.1, p.249.

6.
Modern Glass at Alfred University — The Silverman Collection,

p.14.
7.

‘Alfred University, Joseph Locke Memorial Glass Collection,

established in Alfred University’s College of Ceramics

(USA-534)’,
The Reporter,
Alfred University, v.XXXIV

(February, 1958).

8.
Golledge, Christine
Analysis of Design Books, sketches by Joseph

Locke 1881-1882,
(January 1987).

9.
Richardson’s Shape & Design Book,
Broadfleld House Museum

of Glass, Kingswinford, England.

10.
Fauster, Carl. U.
Libbey Glass since 1818,

Len Beach Press,

Toledo, Ohio. (1979).

DR
LEONARD S. RAKOW (1909-1987)

Dr. Leonard Rakow’s death on 19 September 1987,
brought great sadness to his many close friends and

admirers in Britain, especially to those in the Glass Circle

who were particularly aware of his talented contributions

and his lovably generous personality.
An ebullient New Yorker, he rose in the ranks of the

medical profession to become a most highly respected

surgeon, serving as a Captain in the U.S. Army Medical

Corps during World War II. Since his retirement in
1979, Dr. Rakow was free to devote much of his time and

his boundless energy in pursuit of his twin hobbies –
English ceramics and glass. For many years, Leonard and
his charming wife, Juliette (Gypsy), had been shrewdly

building up one of the finest collections spanning the

eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. So well-informed

were both Leonard and Gypsy about the subtle problems
of attribution and about those areas of the highest

potential academic significance that their collections

became valued reference tools for all serious students of

the subject, not only in the States but in Britain, too.

Leonard loved to share their collections with all like-

minded enthusiasts — and no host could be more warm

in his welcome and his hospitality. Happy discussing

freely — and subsequently publishing — his highly

original ideas that so often, rightly, disputed the validity

of traditional interpretations, Dr Rakow’s erudite
contributions in this field steadily grew. On their visits to
this country, he and his wife would not infrequently

present to the Glass Circle (or the English Ceramic

Circle) a most effective joint lecture on their recent

research.
Dr Rakow was one of those rare, larger-than-life

characters, who seemed to have the gift of getting things

done. He and Mrs Rakow became Fellows of Corning

Museum of Glass, Trustees of the Red House Cone,
Fellows of the Royal Society of Arts and Presidents of the
Wedgwood Society of New York. Dr Rakow was

President of the Wedgwood International Seminar,

having for many years edited its
Proceedings.

In October

1984, the Corning Museum of Glass dedicated the

Juliette K. and Leonard S. Rakow Library in their

honour; this public recognition of their many generous
benefactions directed towards the promotion of research

into the history of glass
gave
intense pleasure to all their

friends. In the same year, 1984, Dr Rakow, as Editor,

successfully launched from New York a new scholarly

journal,
Ars Ceramica,

and, under that title, he had the

vision of bringing together knowledge about the twin
products of the fiery furnace; ceramics and glass.
He gave so much; we can only offer Mrs Rakow our

profound condolences.

Hugh Tait

TE D’EXPOSAN T.

a.L

Figure 3. Hodgetts, Richardson & Sons exhibit at the

Paris Exhibition of 1878.
Figure 4. Pair of Lechevrel vases on which handles and

initials have been ground off

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ftlemegmleasans

Figure 1. Joseph Locke’s Portland vase 1878. Authors’

collection,
Figure 2. Joseph Locke at age 32.

Figure 8. ‘Cupid’.

Figure 5. ‘The Happy Child’ and the ‘Unhappy Child’,

by Joseph Locke. (Courtesy of the Chrysler Museum).
Figure 6. Joseph Locke’s initial and date on ‘The

Unhappy Child’ cameo glass vase. (Courtesy of the Chrysler

Museum).

Figure 7. `Cupid on a Cockleshell’.
61

Figure 9. ‘The Zephyr’.

Figure 10. ‘Two Boys on an Eagle’.

Figure 11. ‘Two Boy Musicians’.

Figure 12. Two Boys ac Play’.

Figure 13. Unfinished vase.

Figure 14. Cameo, stolen from Atfred University.

Figure .13a. Detail of figure .13.

Figure 14a. Cameo, in authors’ collection.

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Figure 16. Advertisement for Locke’s `Maize’ art glass.

Figure 15. Locke sketch from Stuart & Sons’ design book,

1882.

Figure 17. Croskey and Locke logo.

Figure 16. Stilt-lye pitman& of
Grapes and Grape

Leaves, by J. Locke.

Figure 20. Egyptian moti

Figure 22. Sailing boat.

Figure 19. ‘Lady Golfer’.

Figure 21. Lobster bowl.
65

Figure 23. Poinsettia vase.

Figure 24. Bacchus design, a favourite.
66

Figure 25. Locke Art, etched signature.

AL .

Figure 26. Locke Art, paper label.

Figure 27. Joseph Locke, at age 90 years.
67

THE WHITTINGTON

LOVING CUP
by Peter Dreiser

When I was taken on one side by Janet Benson and asked
if I would engrave a presentation glass for Robert

Charleston that would both commemorate the fiftieth
anniversary of the Glass Circle, and pay tribute to his

long and distinguished service as President and Chairman,
I accepted the honour with the greatest of pleasure and,
of course, apprehension. The apprehension was because
I was well aware of Robert’s critical eye and frightening

scholarship on the subject of engraved glass.
It had already been agreed by the committee that a

large goblet should be engraved with an appropriate

inscription, together with a view of Whittington Court,
the new home of Robert and Joan Charleston in the

Cotswolds. The choice of glass, view of the house, type of
lettering and supporting motifs, were now my headache.
As with all such commissions, time is always short. First,

I had to design the goblet and produce a sketch of the

lettering and engraving for the committee to approve.
The shape of the goblet was dictated by the architectural

nature of the subject; a bucket-shaped bowl, slightly

wider at the top to give the least distortion to the vertical
lines of the building, but aimed at the elegance of

eighteenth century glass, which is very close to Robert

Charleston’s heart.
Simon Moore, an accomplished glassblower of the

Glass Works, London, produced the goblet, which was

30cm. tall. He read my drawing well, and crowned the
effort with a lovely folded foot for extra protection. Now

I had the glass, the building and the lettering. What was

still needed was an element which held the two halves

together; a transition between the heavier engraved house

and the linear lettering. If at all possible I aim for a design
that encompasses the entire bowl so that, like a sculpture,

it can be appreciated from any position.

For this linkage I decided on overlapping profiles of

glasses, and once more dipped into the eighteenth century
for typical drinking glasses on which to base the design,

and reflect further Robert’s interest in Georgian glass.
But, when it comes to architecture on the wheel, I hear

my teacher’s words, ‘Architecture is a most ungrateful

subject.’ He was, of course, referring to the immense
labour involved in clearing out alI the corners and

levelling the various planes and depths to achieve a result
that appears quite simple.
Having the drawing on paper was a great step forward,

but the final decision could only be made on the glass

itself. Here the juggling began. For example, how close

could I go to the rim? How far should the lettering extend

so that it could be read without turning the glass? How
big should the house be in relation to the length of the
building complex? What proportion of sky should there

be to foreground? In this case a little more sky and lawn

had to be dealt with. Since I like cloud formations, here
was a good opportunity for indulging myself for clouds,

like flourishes in calligraphy, are good space fillers; thus,
Whittington Court has a permanent stormy spring
Cotswold sky, and a deal more lawn to cut.

Such considerations of preparation, change and

positioning are extremely exhausting, and as I have a

tendency to postpone the irrevocable first cut,

preoccupation with the ‘final’ design aids and abets me.

Sometimes this is just as well, for a design left for a while

invites maturer consideration. When everything was

spaced out to my satisfaction I grasped the nettle, and

started with the lettering.
Writing of any kind has a dramatic effect on my blood

pressure, but engraving lettering even more so. It does

not come easily. I have to work at it like a neurotic beaver
to prpduce something worthwhile, but I console myself by

remembering similar comments by professional calli-

graphers. Therefore it pays to keep one’s lettering up to

a good standard. So much fine engraving, both ancient

and modern, has been spoiled by indifferent lettering.

A tracing of the heavily corrected drawn inscription

was positioned on a central vertical line on the glass and
transferred, each line separately, in order to allow for the

conical surface. I have learned to distrust the written

word, the cause of so many painful memories of gruelling
polishing out and correction of errors, not only of mine,

but of other engravers too. One cannot be too careful.

The sudden realisation that a letter is missing, or that one
too inany has been engraved, is like a sickening blow
below the belt, so one checks and checks again.
Having assured myself that everything in regard to the

lettering was in place and correct, I selected a fine dental

diamond burr. This was centred carefully in the lathe
attached to a pin vice to mark out in fine lines the centre

of all the letters. The style is italic, chosen not only

because it is sympathetic to the movement of the

engraving tool, but also because it is a more friendly style
than the formal roman, suggesting that it is handwritten
rather than printed.

Engraving the centre line has the advantage that when

it comes to the second step, which is the thickening of the

main stroke of the letter, there is more room to control the

critical spaces between the letters by pushing the main

weight to the left or right. A fraction, too small to

measure, will often offend, and even an untrained eye will

pick up small differences. A larger diamond burr of a

shape resembling a tiny cartwheel is used for this. The

central thin line is entered by the edge of the wheel and

gradually leaned over to use the full width at the widest
part of the letter; it is then reversed, to form a stroke

similar to that of a reed pen. This may have to be
repeated several times, when any carelessness or the

slightest hesitation, will leave a ragged edge. Once in

trouble, any attempt at correction is to struggle in

quicksand.
Eventually, all that was required was to cut in the

seriphs with a fine line wheel. All flourishes were left until

the border motifs were completed, at which point undue
gaps of space were filled with the correct decorative

extension. Using flourishes as a gap filler does not mean
that a few grape-vine tendrils will suffice. Flourishes are

a delight to do, especially after completing the hardest

piece of the work, but they must be used with restraint.

The unwary can easily become entangled and suffer the fate
of Lycurgus. A water drip was used with these operations

which, in washing away the glass dust, gives good vision

and at the same time reduces silica dust hazards.
With the lettering virtually complete, the side panels,

consisting of overlapping glass profiles, which would act

as a transition from the lettering to the house, were next
considered. After the design was drawn in white ink, the

outlines were followed with line wheels. Three different

sizes were selected: the largest of which was 50mm. to cut
the long straight lines, a medium size for larger curves,

and 5mm. to negotiate the tight curves. The sides of the

glass shapes abutting the house were cut to a depth of

2mm. with a coarse wheel, and eased back gradually

toward the house to meet the natural surface of the glass.
When both panels were completed the surface left by

the coarse wheel was smoothed by a fine stone wheel,

leaving a small section following the relief edges; its

texture, after slight polishing, I found to be quite pleasing.

In all, the panels were quite effective, but since the

sudden drop to relief was a little stark I found it necessary
to texture the surfaces of the glasses by following the

vertical shape of the glass with a 10mm. stone wheel.

When polished right back this left a residual movement in
the surface resembling a gentle ripple on water.
I was now left with the ‘ungrateful subject’, the house.

A straight transfer of a building can only be done on a
cylindrical glass. On a conical-shaped glass every vertical

line of a building must be slightly corrected to follow the

line of the bowl, which imparts to the image a slight ‘fan’

effect. This small distortion, which should not offend the

eye, has the advantage of making the building appear

upright in the centre of the goblet when it is turned. To

serve as guidelines to the engraving, a grid of horizontal

and vertical lines was constructed, and within this the
framework of the house was carefully drawn. Only the
main structure was needed, since any other detail would
be obliterated in the preliminary engraving. First, all the

long lines were cut with a 60mm. wheel. For the

remaining lines, progressively smaller wheels were

employed. Once the framework of the house had been

completed, the lawn and the trees were faintly outlined
with a small pointed diamond burr.
Having determined the extent of the sky, the distant

clouds were commenced first, as is customary with
intaglio engraving. After the other disciplines, engraving

the sky came as a welcome relaxation; provided one

observes the characteristics of the clouds one can drift
happily with them. Using a stone wheel, which gives a

softer tone, the form of the upper cumuli was delineated;
and by a series of matting, polishing and rematting
operations, the whole of the intermediate layers were built

up. Areas of well-polished glass left around the trees and
roofs provided the essential contrast and distance.
Now began the laborious process of intaglio-engraving

the house. This technique has its origins in the engraved

hardstone seals of antiquity. The same order is followed,

in that the subject furthest away is cut the shallowest, and
the nearest the deepest, to give the illusion of relief. Thus,

the trees and chimneys were lightly engraved, the roof

and gables slightly deeper, and the oriel and bay windows
the deepest of all. To achieve the right relationship

between the different planes is a constant preoccupation
and one has to work diligently at this complex procedure.

In much the same way a medallist translates sculpture to

a shallow bas-relief by reducing the planes in proportion
to each other, to render a perfectly modelled head, often

obtruding no more than 1mm.

When the intaglio-engraving was finished the slight

unevenness was smoothed out gently with a wide strap

wheel, running at a very slow speed. At about this stage
the lawn was extended, and to give interest to the bare

foreground, a few daffodils and wild flowers were added.

Finally, all the other details, the mullions, frames, drain

pipes and gutters were drawn in and engraved, which

virtually completed the house.
However, after washing the goblet, in spite of the

sculptural form, the scene appeared rather flat and in low

key due to the surface matting giving the same density all

over. Therefore, the selective polishing used to bring the
clouds to life was now extended to the house, trees and
lawn. Whilst
the
half tones needed only
the
gentlest

touch, the windows and deeper shadows required longer

contact with the cork polishing wheel and pumice

powder. The sunlit parts were finely cross-hatched by

hand, using a sharp diamond burr, which added a final

sparkle.

Not too soon I had come to the end of the commission,

for the day of the presentation was critically near. But
before concluding this resume of how the commission was

carried out perhaps I may be allowed one additional

comment. So often engraved glass suffers from both lack

of light and space. I was therefore very pleased to learn
that the loving cup now stands in a prominent position at
Whittington Court, on a dark mahogany table and, most

importantly, in plenty of space.

…..

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PHILIP WHATMOOR 1934-1989

H.G. Wells enticed our imagination to consider the

future life of the Time Traveller… ‘wandering on some
plestiosaurus haunted Oolitic coral reef, or beside the

lonely saline lakes of the Triassic Age’. Thus enthralled,

the writer calls on you to allow your hopeful reverie to

construct a happy and celestial domain for our dear

departed friend, Philip Whatmoor.
There will be many old shops to fulfil Philip’s passion

for collecting. He wrote
Dorset Clocks and Clockmakers.
His

collection of Chinese Art was remarkable and he would

show it to you with such enthusiasm — an exquisite ivory

cricket container and the great Chinese bed. This latter

deserves an essay alone. It is huge and one could live in

it. Please dream with Philip that it can miraculously be

enshrined in the V&A beside the Great Bed of Ware.

Glass pictures were another area of expertise (how he
would have enjoyed the exquisite Chinese paintings

behind glass in the recently opened top floor of Marble
Hill House, Twickenham).
With his two brothers he created a public museum

which demonstrates and makes farm cider using
eighteenth and nineteenth century methods at Owermoigne,

Dorset. Our strongest memories of Philip will be his

amazing performances on his musical glasses with which
he made an American tour to rapturous acclaim. And the

enthusiasm he imparted to the Jubilee exhibition
Strange

and Rare.
It will certainly be a busy time for him in the

Elysian Fields; a thought which mitigates our sadness at
his untimely death but months away from retirement,

after a long and very successful career in the oil industry,
which took him to the Middle and Far East.
Philip served The Glass Circle with great charm,

efficiency and grace: he was Committee member for
nineteen years and Honorary Treasurer for thirteen of

these. His accounts, so clear, brief and simple, were a

model of excellence.

Yet with all his knowledge and breadth of interest he

was fascinated, utterly enthralled (coupled with his

unique chuckle), in the glass you had in your hand.

and you.

Philip will be sadly missed: as Wells would have said,

he was a jolly nice chap.

John S.M. Scott

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