English Antique Glass
Abstract
A future for Antique Glass?
Mediaeval Glass
White Glass
Grisaille Glass
Architectural Glass Developments
Destruction of Churches
18th Century Onwards
Mediaeval Revival
Establishment and Closure of Hartley Wood, Sunderland
Antique Glass: Present Position
Architectural:
Mike Davis reflects on the closure of Sunderland Glassworks and describes the development of Antique Glass.
A covenant for windows for the Beauchamp Chapel, Warwick, stipulated that they should be made up of "Glasse beyond the Seas and with no glass of England" - Dugdale, Antiquities of Warwickshire (1656)
In the late 1990's Sunderland Glass works went dark. Something of the theatre of glassblowing made the glass works such a vital part of what the National Glass Centre called its "visitor attraction". Behind the visual drama of muff blowing there was the reality that the sheets, once flattened, were destined to become part of works of art in the windows of buildings as diverse as cathedrals, railway stations, shopping malls or domestic front doors.
Harry Prior, one of the senior blowers, was employed occasionally by the Centre for a time to demonstrate muff blowing to the public. At the end of each demonstration, the muffs were smashed: it being too expensive to keep flattening kilns and the lehr running. Only small crowns were viable and those were kept for use. Nigel Alder and some of the skilled blowers, who put so much effort into trying to re-establish English Antique, have gone to Cornings. The University of Sunderland has since leased the space and the Glass and Ceramics Department moved into it in the summer of 2000.
Everyone involved has their post mortem views. Factors such as: the strength of the pound against the Euro, which gave the European competitors a 12% advantage in the last months; the retail market going flat at the same time, so that decorative glass ware which the factory produced failed to support the antique production; the technical problems which slowed down the attempt to recapture the market share lost to France and Germany; and perhaps crucially, the lack of investment in the first three years. There was much sympathy locally for the people who put their heart and soul into the revival. Many people associated with stained glass expressed regret at what seemed to be the final passing of English Antique. After initial production difficulties, particularly with annealing, the firm was producing some tints and flashed glass of good quality. Perverse then that the Glassworks should close when they had solved so many of the problems associated with restarting. As we enter the third millennium, it is timely to review this raw material of the craft.
A future for Antique Glass?
The very name antique tends to confirm the prejudice which some commentators express, about what they see as the continued historicism of the stained glass strand of architectural glass. Is there much of a place left for this hand-made glass vocabulary? Certainly the huge advances in glass technology, manufacturing process, and the developments in architectural technology, might suggest otherwise. So many possibilities in the manipulation and application of glass have opened up in the last few years.
Antique glass is after all a material based on a Victorian interpretation and reinvention of one of the mediaeval techniques of glass production. The flattened "muff" (the other being the spun flat disc called the "crown") gave comparatively small and expensive sheets most suitable for mosaic style construction. As remarkable things can now be done, particularly with unleaded glass on a very large scale, hand made blown sheet might begin to look like an anomalous luxury.
Mediaeval Glass
If we look at the origins of stained glass, when 'it replaced the mosaic set in a gold ground as the free light of day replaced the furtive glimmer of the crypt' its high value could clearly be viewed in a positive light; 'Materiam superbat opus', the notion of art/workmanship surpassing material, being reinforced where the material itself was highly valued (witness Suger's accounts of the glazing of St. Dennis). It seems that mediaeval values of art depend on the physical as well as the metaphysical characteristics of raw materials. "Mediaeval people were no strangers to the glamour of expense and, as Suger's writings suggest, self advertisement could be effective precisely in terms of cash values' . Despite its expense, sheet glass was not a rare commodity in terms of trade. York glass painters bought their 'Renysshe' 'Hessian' and 'Burgundy' glass from the German merchants in Hull; Londoners bought glass from Normandy. In Britain, only white (clear) glass was produced (e.g. at Chiddingfold in Sussex, and from the 14th century, in Staffordshire).
The earliest surviving stained glass in this country, although not precisely dated, comes from Monkwearmouth and Jarrow in the North East and would have been made between the foundation of the two monasteries in AD674 and 681 respectively, and their destruction in the Viking raids in about AD867. All this early glass from Monkwearmouth, Jarrow and from Escomb and Repton was muff glass. None of it showed any discernable trace of painting. Besides whites, there are reds, yellowish browns, ambers, greens and several blues. Although there is evidence of paint on one of the pieces of mid to late 10th century glass found in excavations in Winchester, the indications are that unpainted mosaic style windows were still being made in Saxon England.
The abiding quality of all the antique production lay in the imperfections of both body and surface of the glass. Chords, seeds (bubbles) and striations which hot glass workers today tend to seek to eliminate from their glass, are the very things which create the character of antiques and activate the transmitted light. The earliest muff glass is pot metal, where the sheet is coloured throughout. Reds, in particular, are streaky in appearance, with red and clear running through the body, perhaps in an attempt to keep the colour bright and to prevent the problem of over dark sheets. Flashed rubies were later produced, presumably to solve the same problem. By the late 13th century there are examples of the flashed glasses being abraded to reveal the clear body.
White Glass
The most common impurity in white glass was a green tinge, due to the iron content of the sand used in manufacture. The difficulty of producing a truly clear glass in the 12th century would have made it almost as expensive as the prized blue, the saphirorum materia of which Suger writes. Theophilus noted that the French were particularly skilled at producing it. Glass quality deteriorated in the late 14th century. The presumption is that the Black Death caused major disruption to both the manufacture and distribution of glass, as with any other aspect of life in northern Europe. Problems of quality, such as instability, or of the production of an over-thin sheet have also been ascribed to the failure of supply to keep pace with increased demand.
Grisaille Glass
Grisaille glass emerged in the 12th century. Its use throughout the 13th and 14th centuries, has given rise to some speculation as to the nature of its development. The earliest examples were simple but elegant leaded patterns of clear or lightly tinted glass, and subsequently elaborate designs with medallion formats and delicate foliate painting. The earliest were doubtless made as one response in the dispute between Cistercians and the Cluniacs of the use of decoration. By the end of the 12th century, there were about five hundred Cistercian monasteries throughout Europe, but the order had by that time relaxed its rules and allowed the use of the figure in its windows. There is some suggestion that the further development was mainly driven by cost and by an increasing desire to reveal the interior of the church more completely. John Gage maintains that the change to such lighter schemes was essentially aesthetic and conceptual and to do with the revaluation of the role of light itself. Certainly windows such as 'The Five Sisters' at York Minster have a sensuous appeal and suggest a considerable difference of feeling to that of the austerity of the 12th century Cistercians.
Architectural Glass Developments
The exceptionally clear whites used in the geometric grasaille windows in Exeter Cathedral were purchased in Rouen and shipped to the port of Plymouth (at a cost of 6 pence per foot, whereas the coloured glass was 1 shilling per foot). It does seem likely that cost was a factor, particularly in some of the less wealthy churches in England, and that English white glass was widely used. The continued importation of 'Normandy white' glass in the 15th century suggests that its greater clarity made its higher price (as against English whites) worth paying for major projects. The knowledge of the use of silver stain to decorate white glass with yellow, was known from the 10th century in the Arab world, and (in translation) reached the court of Alfonso X of Castile y Leon towards the end of the 13th century. It appears in windows in France and England in the early 1300s. The capacity for increased decoration whilst retaining admission of light was a major factor in the design approaches of the 14th and 15th centuries. (Catherine Brisac gives a date of 1410 for the earliest systematic use of silver stain in Italy - curiously late). Although enriching the decorative vocabulary, silver stain would not on its own, have provided the basis for the change in painterly values during the Renaissance. It was the introduction of a range of enamels - red, blue, purple, green and brown, which made that technically possible.
In Italy Donatello, Ucello, Perugino, Del Castagno, all designed stained glass, but it was Ghilberti who seems to have a particular interest in light, both in terms of theory and practice. His Commentaries, stimulated perhaps by Alberti's Della Pittura, also drew on Arab sources of learning, particularly the philosopher Alhazen writing in the 12th century. Theoretical works dealing with glass making which were more than accumulations of technical recipes emerged in Italy, if anything rather earlier than those dealing with painting in fresco and tempera. There is, for example, a surviving treatise on glass painting by Antonio da Pisa from the late 14th century. There must have been some tension between Ghilberti's desire as a sculptor and jeweller to reconcile the need to view fine carving with the possibilities provided by an increased palette of rich saturated colour in his stained glass.
In England, by the late 15th century, the most valuable commissions tended to come as frequently from the Court as the Church and native artists were beginning to suffer from unregulated competition. Richard III agreed to ban the importation of completed windows, but Flemish artists were in the ascendant. Henry VII appointed Barnard Flower from the Netherlands, as King's Glazier in 1497. Henry VIII appointed the Fleming, Gaylon Hone to succeed Flower who died in 1517. Flower is recorded as importing 'Rhenysshe' glass (i.e. from Lorraine) for his project at the Savoy Hospital. Where detailed historic research has been carried out, the indications are that glaziers had a large and varied stock of glass from which to select. Glass of the period at Fairford Church in Gloucestershire for example, includes a good proportion of crown glass in addition to muff glass, and besides flashed red on white and green on white, there is even an example of a red flash on a blue base. Some Venetian glass was apparently available in London during this period but there is no evidence of its use at Fairford. The Fairford glass is in larger pieces, seemingly to allow a reduced use of lead lines.
Destruction of Churches
The other glazing programme of this period familiar to many, is that of King's College Chapel where the major part of the glazing was done between 1526 and 1531. Barely three years after the completion of the glazing here, Henry VIII had embarked on the suppression of the monasteries of which there were more than eight hundred; by 1540 none were left untouched. The assets and lands were seized but many of the building were simply left unprotected from the weather, once the lead from their roofs (and in many cases from their windows) was melted down. In 1547 Edward VI issued a decree that all monuments to Roman Catholicism should be demolished. The survival of the craft took the form of decorated quarries often painted and stained on white glass, with flowers, animals and birds, and with the increased use of uncontentious heraldic glass, both church and secular.
In France, considerable losses were suffered during the 1560s - for example in Le Mans, Lyon and Poitiers, when these cities were occupied by the Protestant forces in the religious wars. Glaziers in the other countries subject to the Reformation also turned their energies to armorial glass, where abrading through the colour of flash glass and the use of coloured enamels suited the design content of their work. By the early 17th century much of the glass used in Western Europe was still made in the glass works of Lorraine. In 1633 Louis XIII issued a decree that its glass works should be destroyed, in retribution for the resistance of Charles IV, the Duke of Lorraine, to his armies, and by 1636 they were razed.
In England, the years of the Commonwealth (1642-53) saw the destruction of more figurative church glass. All images of the Virgin Mary and the Trinity were ordered to be destroyed. After the restoration of the monarchy in 1660, the use of enamel on clear glass became the dominant approach, but in spite of the growing interest in the production of translucent paintings on glass in this period, it seems that glass painters still felt the lack of pot metal or flash to work with. J.A. Knowles records that one of the York glass painters, Henry Gyles (1645 - 1709) experimented with the making of coloured glass, possibly employing York Glass Manufactory. Gyles was familiar with the composition of flash glass and had his friend Dr Place make enquiries about it when he visited Florence in 1693. Price had no success in dealing with his contact who had worked at Murano, and was shown only pot metal.
18th Century Onwards
In London, Samuel Paterson (1742 - 1802) a well respected bookseller and auctioneer (worth noting since he was responsible for the first auctions of ancient Continental glass imported into this country) established a glass blowing enterprise in the 1750s or 60s which made coloured glass. In the same period, Jean-Adolphe Dannecker, an equally respected burgher of Strasbourg, who had apparently made a fortune from the production of gingerbread, sadly lost it in attempts to rediscover the secrets of traditional stained glass manufacture. When he addressed a petition to the superintendent of the King's buildings, he was told that no use was made of stained glass because people didn't want anything which made their buildings darker, and that if the secret of its manufacture were to be rediscovered, there would be no one who would know what to do with it.
By the late 1820s the French chemist Gustave Bontemps, who had developed an interest in stained glass, had managed to produce a pot metal red and by 1845 a stable flashed ruby glass. The Sevres factory, under the direction of the chemist Alexandre Brongniart, included in its enterprises, a stained glass workshop which ran from 1828 to 1854, and provided some impetus to the research of antique manufacture. It employed the service of, amongst others, Viollet-le Duc, who produced a number of cartoons for them in the 1840s. In 1865 the St. Just glass factory (now part of St. Gobain), which started out as a producer of champagne bottles, began the production of mouth blown flat glass.
Mediaeval Revival
The interest in the mediaeval, and the archaeological approach which led to the revival of stained glass in the middle of the 19th century, was not a peculiarly English phenomenon. It was a common factor in art and culture in France, Germany and Austria which subsequently filtered into other counties in Europe. In France, Victor Hugo's publication of his book on the Notre Dame in 1831, had helped arouse fresh interest in the middle ages. The founding of the Archaeological Society in 1834 did much to encourage the revival of traditional techniques, not least in glass. In Germany there were links between the Munich glass workshop and the Nazarenes, whose aims were to instil their work with a strong spiritual dimension and whose colours were intentionally mediaeval. In Vienna, the Brotherhood of St Luke was set up in 1809. This aimed to dispel the corruption that they believed affected the art of their contemporaries. In 1844 Adolphe Dideron founded the review Annales Archaeological which assembled doctrinal articles in which stained glass was identified as a moral art imbued with spiritual values.
In England, the roles of the architect A.N.W. Pugin and the barrister, antiquarian and stained glass connoisseur Charles Winston, have been well rehearsed. Pugin was making drawings of mediaeval stained glass in France in the late 1830s and Winston was already travelling through England drawing mediaeval stained glass. In 1849 Winston obtained the help of a Dr. Medlock of the Royal College of Chemistry in analysing samples of mediaeval stained glass. This enabled James Powell and Sons to begin to manufacture antiques at their Whitefriars works. Martin Harrison notes that most of the more aesthetically successful windows produced before 1855 were made without the benefit of the new glass, and that it took some years for that benefit to become apparent. The Pugin windows made in the 1840s by Hardmans were, for example, made with Lloyd and Summersfield's flint glass. Harrison's opinion is that the difference in glass quality between these, and early Winston inspired windows, would only have been obvious to an expert.
Establishment and Closure of Hartley Wood, Sunderland
W.E.Chance, a younger son in the firm of Chance Brothers, first made antique in 1863 at the behest of J.R. Clayton. He tried in vain to persuade the family firm to add its production to the existing lines but was told that he could make in one week all the glass needed to meet the antique demand of the next twenty-five years. (After his death in 1923 the ownership of his firm was taken back by Chance Bros. which finally closed in the 1950s). But the colour mixer for Chance, Alfred Wood, joined James Hartley junior in 1893 and the Company of Hartley Wood was established in 1895. (Hartley's Wear Glassworks, which was one of the largest in the world, had closed in 1892, largely due to their failure to compete with the continental tank method of melting glass in bulk, which was much cheaper than the pot method).
After the First World War, the economic decline coupled with inevitable changes in style in architecture and design, resulted in a reduced demand for antique. Decorative glazing, particularly in the domestic sphere, made increased use of rolled and patterned glass. During the depression years of the 1930s, it was common for Hartley Wood to manufacture for only six months of the year. In the Second World War, Hartley Woods production of glass ceased altogether for a time. The works suffered a direct hit by a landmine in 1943 and was kept open mainly to retail plain window glass.
In the post war period, considerable quantities of antique were needed to supply the programme of restoration of war-damaged glass. Hartley Wood had to meet this with very limited resources and outdated equipment. The glass was melted in a six pot coal fired furnace, and sited in a traditional bottle shaped cone, which was only demolished in 1958. The introduction of single pot furnaces, new gloryholes and a new annealing lehr helped make the plant more efficient. Production of antique was supplemented in about 1970, with the addition of rolled streaky "Cathedral" and opalescent.
During the 1970s, the expanded production of coloured glass in the United States, and of competitively priced antique in Germany and France, substantially reduced Hartley Wood's market share. The company became a wholly owned subsidiary of Pilkington Brothers plc in 1982 on the retirement of Allen Alder and Hartley Wood. After an ill-fated attempt to create a high quality rolled glass had failed, Pilkingtons closed the factory in the summer of 1989. In a letter to the Secretary of the Victorian Society, (published in the British Society of Master Glass Painters (BSMGP) Newsletter, 1989) Anthony Pilkington noted that Hartley Wood was running at a loss and that antique sales had fallen by nearly a third "as a result of considerable imports from foreign manufacturers". Interestingly, he refers in the same letter to the idea of a "living museum project" being dropped after a protracted discussion with the Local Authority.
In 1990 what was described in the BSMGP newsletter as a "group of British and French businessmen with strong associations with Hong Kong, Southeast Asia and the Middle East" acquired the name "Hartley Wood" from Pilkington and reopened the firm. This regime lasted no longer than that of Pilkingtons. By 1998 the University of Sunderland had, as a desperate measure, stepped in to give temporary employment to most of the Hartley Wood blowing team, in order to try to avoid their dispersal on closure of the firm. They were then taken on by the Sunderland Glassworks in the summer for that year. Now the Sunderland Glassworks too, has gone. We seemed at this point to have come back full circle. Once the existing stock of English antique is used up, handmade sheet will have to be purchased and transported mainly from France and Germany just as it was in the mediaeval period.
The good news is that at the time of writing, MJR Furnaces who bought some of the equipment from the Sunderland Glassworks on its closure, have set up the English Antique Glass Company. This has begun a limited production of antique (streakies and some gold pinks) in Alvechurch in the West Midlands.
Antique Glass: Present Position
In spite of the enormous changes which have occurred in the last few years, there is still a need for antique: for antique glass provides the raw material for more than one aesthetic. To imagine that its only proper use would be to create the dark luminosity of Chartres, is of course absurd, but the high theatre of the painted, richly patterned antiques in the installation which John Patsalides made in the Hartlepool Art Gallery in 1996, gave a contemporary example of that 'glow in the dark'. The gallery, in a converted church, provided the space, height and variety of lighting conditions in which Patsalides was able to make full use of the richness of antique.
The bejewelled and densely decorated surface of a Harry Clarke window may no longer look appropriate in the lighter interiors on contemporary architecture, but the small, lyrical, glowing acis etched flashed antiques of a James Scanlon panel does. The bold "chivalric" colours in the glass vaults of Brian Clarke depend on a glass which is active and alive. Certainly the use of large shapes of unrelieved colour can be "thin in effect and trying to the eye". The fact that this was said by Hugh Arnold back in 1913 doesn't make it any less true.
The use of contemporary techniques, lamination, bonding, fusing and slumping, and the rediscovery of the excitement as well as the subtleties of the eroded surface by acid, sandblasting or engraving, the revitrifying of enamels through silkscreen, all of these give rise to myriad possibilities when used on float or machine made sheet. But there is still a great deal of potential for the rich qualities of antique as a light filter, and the loss to the glazier's palette, of that shifting colour and tone in the streaky glass of English antique would be a great sadness. The English Antique Glass Company is therefore carrying the mantle and deserves every success.
Mike Davis is Reader in Architectural Glass, University of Sunderland, a distinguished stained glass artist and Fellow of the British Society of Master Glass Painters (BSMGP).
Contact details for the English Antique Glass Company are:
The English Antique Glass Company,
Bordesley Hall,
The Holloway,
Alvechurch,
Birmingham,
B48 7QB.
Tel: 01527 61100
Fax: 01527 61110
www.englishantiqueglass.co.uk
englishantiqueglass@furnaces.fsbusiness.co.uk
British Society of Master Glass Painters
References
1 Malraux, Andre. The Voices of Silence. 1974 Palladin2 Gage, J. Colour and Meaning. 1999. Thames and Hudson
3 Ibid
4 Knowles, A.J. A History of the York School of Glass-Painting. Journal of the British Society of Master Glass Painters VolIV.No.2 October 1931
5 Brisac, Catherine. A Thousand Years of Stained Glass. 1986. MacDonald
6 Brown, Sarah and MacDonald, Lindsay. The Mediae8val Stained 7 Glass of Fairford Parish Church. 1997. Sutton
7 Knowles, A.J. Journal of the British Society of Master Glass Painters. Vol No1 April 1935
8 Bayliss, Sarah. Journal of Stained Glass Vol.XXII. 1998
9 Brisac, Catherine. Ibid.
10 Harrison, Martin. Victorian Stained Glass. 1980. Barrie and Jenkins
11 Stokes, Thomas. W.E. Chance and the Revived Manufacture of Coloured Glass. Journal of the British Society of Master Glass Painters
Beside the BSMGP Journals cited in the notes, there are several issues which have articles which deal with the histories of antique in more detail:
1972/3 Vol.X.V No.1, History of English Antique by Hugh Salmond
1989/90 Vol.XIX.No 1, Hartley Wood and company by Christopher Salmond
1997 Vol.XXI, A.W.N. Pugin and the making of Medieval Stained Glass by Stanley Shepherd
