British Glass
British glass manufacturers had claimed that traditional design sold during the 1920s and the 1930s while ignoring countries such as Scandinavia who employed designers they had trained. The British glass industry tended to hire designers such as Keith Murray who was an architect and he free-lanced for Stevens & Williams, William Wilson who was the chief designer at Whitefriars glass and Clyne Farquaharson worked for John Walsh Walsh.
The new designs were favored, however the public were less enthusiastic proffering the more traditional designs and the glass manufacturers were stuck in the past while not embracing the new designs and not thinking where the future of the glass industry lay.
During the post war period British design was stuck in the past while designers were looking to the future and this is when the British Government wanted to encourage modern design. This sparked a new interest and the Government sponsored a number of exhibitions to try and promote new designs while bringing the glass industry out of the doldrums. The first exhibitions being held in 1946 Britain Can Make It and the 1951 Festival of Britain.
Clyne Farquharson, Keith Murray and William Wilson are generally considered when discussing British glass design between the wars. There also other designers such as Ludwig Kny, Reginald Williams-Thomas while other designers that are not so well known such as J. Cuneen, Freda Coleborn, Deanne Meanley, Doreen Nogrove, R. Pierce and W. J. Whitworth but to name a few
Designers such as David Hammond, John Luxton, Helen Monroe and Irene Stevens influenced contemporary and future designs for the glass industry.
Exhibitions such as the Harrods exhibition of 1934 had an affect on the cut glass industry and while making the public aware of designs and the designers currently enhancing the glass products available. The Royal Academy held the exhibition Art In Industry in 1935 and the Harrods exhibition encouraged artists to submit designs both in ceramics and glass and the winning designs would be produced by Stuart & Sons and artists such as Paul Nash, Graham Sutherland, Laura Knight, Eric Ravilious, Gordon Forsythe, Ernest & Dod Proctor as well as Stuart’s chief designer Ludwig Kny.
These designs are now taken for granted while fifty years ago these were at the forefront of design and were not taken so lightly by the public at the time. While the Italian and the Scandinavian designs were evolving and catching the British publics imagination.
Magazines such as the Pottery & Glass Trade Gazette praised the new foreign wares while the British wares were not so popular. This coupled with the need to export glass after a period of austerity produced a strange mix of traditional and modern design. The British glass industry had now entered into the idea of employing full time trained designers, however there work was often compromised by the companies who were too scared to produce modern wares and were stuck in a time warp where they favored the more traditional glass designs and this is very evident from glass catalogues produced at the time.
This lead to the decline of the British glass industry as they had not moved with the times while our Italian and Scandinavian glass manufacturers succeeded as they had progressed and embraced modern designs which the British public had learned to love.