Early English cut glass: a new history: cut glass is a distinctively English art, yet its early history, in the first quarter of the 18th century, is enshrouded in mystery. In the first of two articles, Andy McConnell examines the origins of the technique and proposes a new chronology based on a study of datable examples

Apollo, May, 2004 by Andy McConnell

Cut decoration has been the defining characteristic of English glassware since shortly after George Ravenscroft perfected the formula for lead crystal in 1676. Fashions for engraving and enamelling have occasionally prevailed, but both proved ultimately fleeting when compared to the enduring appeal of the sober, geometric style of glass cutting that became internationally known as the facon d'Angleterre.

Ravenscroft's discovery coincided with the demise of the Venetian style, or facon de Venise, that had dominated European glassmaking since the renaissance. By 1700, its flamboyant colours, trails and projections had been superseded across most of Europe by a voluptuous form of engraving, known as facon de Boheme, pioneered in Prague from around 1600. However, whilst decorative artists on the European mainland worked from a palette of shells, scrolls, birds and putti, first in the baroque, then the rococo manner, their English counterparts steered an entirely different path. Their restrained, sober forms and motifs characterise what is now known as the 'Queen Anne' style.

'Queen Anne' architecture, furniture and silverware are well documented. However, the development of early English cut-glass has remained a grey area due to a lack of contemporary evidence. Indeed, the understanding of early English glass has always suffered in comparison with other media, such as silver and porcelain, largely because the anonymity of its makers and decorators has left academics and collectors more reliant on guesswork than fact. Yet, ironically, it is the date marks applied to silverware generally, and cruet frames in particular, that have finally revealed that English glass cutting had established an idiosyncratic national identity by as early as 1700 (Fig. 2).

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Glass decoration by means of abrasion is an ancient art, first practised in Egypt around 1300 BC. Pliny the Elder (AD 24-79), described glass cutting processes involving the use of various grades of sand, and mentioned the term torno teritur, implying the use of rotary wheels. (1) Roman, Sassanian and Islamic craftsmen (Fig. 1) gradually developed a range of techniques and effects that were then largely forgotten between the eleventh century and the late 1600s, when cutting was revived as a decorative art.

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In Central Europe, Caspar Lehmann, gemstone decorator to Rudolf II of Bohemia from 1588, was appointed 'Imperial Glass-Cutter' in 1608. However, his work, first on mineral rock, then on glass intended to resemble it, was figurative, unpolished and thus more akin to engraving than cutting (Fig. 3). 'Modern' cut glass probably dates from around 1680, when individual grooves began to be clear polished in Nuremberg and Potsdam (see Fig. 5).

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Cut table glass appears to have been unknown in England before 1700. It was preceded by cut mirrors and engraved glassware, which were the exclusive preserve of the super-rich. For example, in 1692, the furniture maker Gerrit Jenson supplied the Duke of Devonshire with fittings at Chatsworth that including a mirrored door for the 'great chamber'. (2) Shortly after its installation, Celia Fiennes described it as 'a Large door all of looking glass in great pannels all diamond-cut'. (3) Other English mirrors of the period are decorated with Boheme engraving and localised cutting combined in a style known as Laub und Bandelwerk in Germany and a la Berain in France, after the Parisian draughtsman/pattern-book artist Jean Berain (1637-1711). The finest examples are those at Chatsworth, signed 'John Gumley 1704', and a three-panel overmantle at Burley-on-the-Hill, Rutland, made in London by Richard Robinson and Thomas Howcraft in 1711. A bill for the latter, totalling the extraordinary sum of over 80 [pounds sterling], itemised 'sholoping [scalloping] ye end glasses and cutting ye scoops, 3' [pounds sterling]. (4) All feature finely engraved Boheme baroque armorials, gadroons, Berain-esque strapwork, birds perching on flowers, and acanthus sprouting from hollow cut lenses, or 'scoops', known in German as Kugel.

The earliest examples of wheel-engraved English glassware include a decanter at the Victoria & Albert Museum decorated with the arms of Catherine of Braganza, as borne between the death of her husband, Charles II, in 1685 and her own in 1705, and several drinking-glasses of similar date with Boheme commemorative inscriptions. Like the decoration on the mirrors, these are thought to have been executed by foreigners attracted to London by its growing wealth. Some may be the work of Georg Kreybich or Anion Wilhelm Maurel, both of whom visited London. The extraordinary Kreybich, who toured much of Europe, from Moscow to Constantinople and Madrid, with his barrow-mounted equipment, arrived in London in 1688 with his colleague Christof Pilzen. As Kreybich later recalled of their stay in the capital, 'Our glass was engraved and painted, and none like it had yet appeared there--we were the first'. (5) Anton Wilhelm Maurel, the eminent Nuremburg wheel-engraver, was also in London between 1699-1710, but as with Keybrich, no examples of early English engraved glass can be linked to his hand.