A designer of distinction: the glassware of James Giles: to mark a major exhibition of work by James Giles, Andy McConnell reconstructs a little-known side of the career of this celebrated London porcelain decorator, his glassware. In the first of two articles, a distinctive and original designer who died in poverty is revealed

The work of the London porcelain decorator James Giles (1718-80) has long been recognised, typified by a range of gilt and enamelled motifs spanning the fashions for rococo and neoclassical ornament. (1) However, the identification and understanding of his work was greatly enhanced in 1966 by an article studying Christie's catalogues of two sales of his stock held in 1769 and 1774. (2) Its publication revealed that a significant proportion of Giles's decorative output was applied to glassware.

Confirmation of Giles's role as a glass decorator was followed by a gradual realisation that numerous examples of gilded coloured glass, stylistically dateable to the 1760s and 70s, could be attributed to his atelier. These and other pieces, linked to Giles by factors to be examined in this article and another to appear in APOLLO later this year, place Giles, or possibly a member or members of his staff, amongst the finest decorators of eighteenth-century glass, alongside such celebrated enamellers as the Beilby family of Newcastle-upon-Tyne.

Decorating ran in Giles's family. His father, also called James, was the son of a Huguenot refugee from Nimes named Gilles, and was recorded living in London in 1729 as a 'China Painter'. (3) Yet whilst his elder brother, Abraham, was apprenticed to Philip Margas, a member of the Glass Sellers' Company, in 1729, James Junior was indentured in 1733, at the age of fifteen, to John Arthur, a jeweller at St-Martin-in the-Fields, for a fee of 30 [pounds sterling] and 15s tax. (4) The skills he acquired from Arthur would later become apparent, particularly in his gilding on glass. Having completed his term in 1740, it has been suggested that Giles was next recorded leasing a tenement in Worcester in 1745. If it was the same 'James Giles', he was presumably pursuing an ambition to follow his father's profession.

Giles was certainly in London around 1756, when he rented a workshop with a kiln in Kentish Town before moving to Berwick Street by 1763. (5) In 1767, with his reputation growing, he rented a showroom in the Arts Museum in fashionable Cockspur Street, facing the Haymarket, apparently with the backing of the Worcester porcelain factory. (6) Giles moved to different premises in the same street in 1771 at the end of his association with Worcester. These premises stood in what is now the north-west corner of Trafalgar Square.

Giles bought porcelain from many sources, some in the white, some with existing patterns that he either removed or extended. Likewise, his work on glass varies widely, appearing on domestic articles of all kinds and sizes and in many colours, including, it is suggested, an extensive series of scent bottles and other bijouterie for the luxury trade (Fig. 3).

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Giles advertised extensively, yet, inexplicably, glass was mentioned only twice in his frequent notices in The Public Advertiser between 1767 and 1776, and even then only among lists of sundries. (7) Giles's first notice, in Mortimer's Universal Director of 1763, established a theme repeated many times over the following years. It stated that 'This ingenious Artist copies the Pattern of any China with the utmost exactness, both with respect to the Design and the Colours, either in the European or Chinese taste ... [and that] ... He has also brought the Enamel Colours to great perfection'. (8)

Giles's ledgers for the years 1771-76 survive, comprising seventy-three folios on 167 leaves. (9) In addition to recording orders for over 50,000 pieces of Worcester between 1771 and 1774, they note purchases totalling 234 [pounds sterling] from William Parker's Glass Warehouse, Fleet Street. (10) Although this figure might appear insignificant, it amounted to fifteen per cent of Giles's total expenditure. William Parker was one of London's leading glass merchant-decorators and his trade card, c. 1765, illustrates a sugarloaf-shaped decanter cut with hollow-diamonds similar to versions decorated by Giles with 'mosaic' gilding (Fig. 4). Giles also bought smaller quantities of glass from the Falcon glasshouse, near Southwark Bridge. (11)

[FIGURE 4 OMITTED]

The substantial nature of Giles's business is underlined by Sun Insurance policies that valued his inventory at 2,000 [pounds sterling] in November, 1771, rising to 2,300 [pounds sterling] in August, 1772. Similar policies held by the Worcester factory at the time insured goods and stock worth only 680 [pounds sterling]. (12)

Giles's prolific workshop would have required a considerable number of staff. Indeed, it is a testament to his skills of man-management and quality control that its output maintained such a high standard. His decorators probably included his daughters, Mary (1741-1806) and Sarah Teresa, (1742-1800). (13) The only others so far linked to the workshop are Lewis Barbar, a Swedish miniaturist and 'China Painter', and a Frenchman, Fidelle Duvivier. Barbar, recorded as a debtor in Worcester goal in 1761, is connected to Giles by 'a frame with five miniatures, in enamel' exhibited in their joint names at the Society of Artists in 1762. (15) Duvivier, best-known for his work on Worcester and New Hall porcelain, has been linked to Giles through several items of porcelain painted in the Giles style signed 'F. Duvivier fecit'. (16)