A highly important Beilby enamelled armorial light baluster wine glass, circa 1765

Footnotes

Provenance
Mrs W D Dickinson Collection
Commander Sir Hugh Dawson Collection
With Sheppard and Cooper Ltd
Private British Collection

Literature
W A Thorpe, A History of English and Irish Glass (1929), pl.CXXXII, fig.B3
R J Charleston, English Glass (1968), no.56
Delomosne and Son, Gilding the Lily (1978), p.26, no.64
L M Bickerton, Eighteenth Century English Drinking Glasses (1971), no.739 and (1986), p.330, no.1071
Christopher Sheppard and John Smith, Glass from the Restoration to the Regency (1990), pp.78-9, no.113

Exhibited
English Glass, Victoria and Albert Museum, 4 July-31 August 1968

In the historic literature the arms on this glass have been presumed fictitious but were identified at those of the Yeoman family of Dryburgh in Berwickshire, Scotland, see Sheppard and Smith (1990), p.79. The crest of the winged heart on the reverse was used by several families, but may be that of either Constant or Peake. Sheppard and Smith suggested that this may be a marriage glass.

The Beilby workshop specialised in armorial decoration and their most celebrated productions are a series of royal wine glasses and goblets. Understandably, many proudly bear the Royal arms of George III, King of Great Britain while other specimens show Dutch royal armorials. The British royal glasses mostly have bucket-shaped bowls and opaque twist stems, forms that were popular in England at the time.

Once known as 'Newcastle' balusters, glasses of this distinctive form are now known to have been manufactured in Holland as well as England. It is possible that the Beilbys imported undecorated light-baluster glasses from Holland, as most surviving examples of this shape with Beilby decoration have identical stems. The Beilbys will have been aware that the best glass engravers working in Holland, such as Jacob Sang, favoured the light-baluster shape for their most prestigious commissions. Fourteen Beilby-decorated wine glasses or goblets of similar shape are recorded including the present lot. Eleven of these bear armorials or crests, while three are painted with vine in opaque white enamel. The latter include one in the Victoria and Albert Museum (inv. no.c.625/1936), one in the Kunstmuseum Den Haag (inv. no.1005203) and one in the Fitzwilliam Museum (inv. no.C.513-1961).

Of the crested and armorial examples, eight have direct Dutch connections. They include the magnificent Prince William V goblet from the A C Hubbard Jr. Collection sold by Bonhams on 30 November 2011, lot 142, a smaller wine glass also bearing the arms of Prince William V sold by Bonhams on 1 May 2013, lot 116, two wine glasses with the arms of Prince William V and Princess Wilhelmina accollé, including one from the Julius and Ann Kaplan Collection sold by Bonhams on 15 November 2017, lot 33 and one in Museum Rotterdam (inv. no.17), together with three glasses in private collections bearing the crest of the Tilly family of Haarlem, including one in the Durrington Collection, see Roger Dodsworth's catalogue (2006), p.35, no.29. A goblet attributed to the Beilby workshop from the Buckley Collection bearing the arms of the Van Dongen family of Amsterdam, now in the World of Glass Museum in St. Helens, is the only other heraldic goblet with a Dutch connection.

A further signed Beilby wine glass enamelled with a presumably fictitious coat of arms, again from the Buckley Collection, is in the Victoria and Albert Museum (inv. no.C.623-1936) and was originally acquired in Holland. The only other light baluster wine glass with a Scottish family connection is in the Museum of London (inv. no.34.139/334) and bears the arms accollé of the Paton family of Ferrochie, Fifeshire. The cartouche on the present glass bears a number of close similarities in style and palette to that on a goblet bearing the arms of Anderson impaling Consett from the Julius and Ann Kaplan Collection, sold by Bonhams on 15 November 2017, lot 32.