Description:
The Beilbys were a successful business family from the North East centred around William Beilby (1743-1819). A scholar from Durham School, his father sent him to Birmingham to be apprenticed to John Haseldine an enameller of metal boxes. His brother Richard was also apprenticed in Birmingham as a seal engraver. When their father's business as a silversmith and jeweller failed they returned North and the whole family decamped to Gateshead. William had already been experimenting with enamels on glass and Tyneside would have provided a ready supply of local glass and imported Low Countries glass. Other members of the family were tutored in decorating glass and a thriving business was established.See Glass Circle News, Vol.34 No. 3 Issue 27 Nov. 2011, for an article on Beilby enamelled glass. English wine glass enameled in the workshop of William Beilby (1740-1819) with a landscape setting in green, brown, and black. By the early eighteenth century, the unique optical effects of lead glass were well known by English glassmakers. The material was cold gray in color, heavy in weight, and brilliant when cut. These characteristics made glass especially desirable for lighting devices. When illuminated, transparent candlesticks reflect and refract available light in the room. Enameling on glass in England is rare, with most artisans preferring to cut or engrave the material. England's most skilled enameler was William Beilby, who worked with other family members in Newcastle-upon-Tyne in the 1760s and '70s. A few of Beilby's works are signed, but the majority are not; however, those signed enamel-painted glasses have prompted Beilby attributions for most glasses of this type. The most commonly produced designs included grapevines, armorials, sporting scenes, festoons of flowers, architectural motifs, and classical landscapes. These wine glasses have fashionably facet-cut stems and feet; and are decorated in rare polychrome enamels, which are colored glasses tinted with the addition of metallic oxides.
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https://museums.fivecolleges.edu/detail.php?t=objects&type=ext&id_number=HD+63.198 |
