Antique Whitefriars Glass

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Whitefriars Glass got its name from the white habits worn by the Carmelite Fathers, who established a monastery close to the River Thames in 1241. Centuries later, perhaps in 1680, the monastery's location on what had become London's Fleet Street...
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Whitefriars Glass got its name from the white habits worn by the Carmelite Fathers, who established a monastery close to the River Thames in 1241. Centuries later, perhaps in 1680, the monastery's location on what had become London's Fleet Street would make it convenient place for a glass factory, as deliveries of the sand used to manufacture glass generally got to London be via river barge. By 1834, that same factory, now called Whitefriars Glassworks, was purchased by an entrepreneur named James Powell, who was apparently looking for a business for his sons. Initially, the three Powell boys made quarry glass, which produced many of the same effects as stained glass but was less expensive to manufacture. During the middle of the century, Whitefriars also made actual stained glass, executing designs by John Hungerford Pollen, a contemporary of Arts and Crafts pioneer William Morris, for windows at the Church of the Assumption in Wales. It was Morris who got the sons into glassware, hiring them to produce designs by Victorian architect Philip Webb. Decanters and glasses for Red House, Morris' London home, followed, which launched Whitefriars into the glassware business. Then, in 1875, Henry James Powell, a Powell grandson, pushed the firm into new glass technologies, from opalescent treatments used in art glass to the clear globes of light bulbs. Throughout the remainder of the 19th century and all the way until World War II, Whitefriars continued to produce mold-blown glass, stained glass, and scientific glass. After the war, in 1954, a young designer named Geoffrey Baxter joined the firm. Baxter's colorful, geometric designs had an enormous influence on the British art glass movement. Today, his textured vases of the 1960s, with pattern names like "Drunken Bricklayer," "Nailhead," "Knobbly," and "Bark," and in shapes identified as "Banjo," "Cello," Coffin," and "TV," are widely collected by fans of vintage British art glass. Throughout the 1960s and...
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