MIDDLE CLASS GLASS
Beautiful 1920’s pieces looked to cash in on post-war affluence
DON’T write about the weather, they said. It’ll be a different season tomorrow when the column is printed. But flamin’ ‘eck, June is certainly living up to its name. All we want to do is sit in the garden and sip cool drinks from glasses like those illustrated here.
They are all from a selling collection assembled by specialist Mike Moir, who will be showing them at next month’s Art & Antiques for Everyone (see panel). With such cheery and colourful designs, who cares what the weather will be like by then.
Made by the Stuart & Sons glassworks in Stourbridge, they date from the years following the hardships of the First World War, when a new and emerging middle class grew increasingly prosperous.
Mike explained that during the mid-1920s, key staff at Stuart’s realised that in order to outsell the often good yet cheap imports coming from newly-regenerated mainland Europe, something had to be done.
Prior to that, Stuart’s fine cut and engraved glass graced the tables of the upper-middle classes. Years spent improving their engraving and cutting techniques, produced stunning products, but costs were high and designs still largely Victorian.
“Art Nouveau had come and gone,” Mike says. “Art Deco was all the rage, but Stuart’s was stuck in the past.”
However, in 1927, Stuart’s chief designer Ludwig “Lu” Kny, (the “K” was silent, so he was known as “Loo-ny” to his friends), persuaded his bosses to follow many of the great European glasshouses and produced glass with enamelled decoration.
“In a total departure from its core ranges of fine cut crystal, the firm introduced vibrantly coloured enamel designs, the earliest of which were mostly variants on the summer country garden theme,” Mike says.
“They covered a range of the classic garden flowers such as lupins, irises and pansies.
“Quickly though, Stuart’s realised designs needed to reflect the interests of well-off 1920s-30s set: hunting, gambling and sailing. They even braved the excesses of jazzy Art Deco and produced some brilliantly vibrant abstract patterns, which graced a variety of cocktail ware, such as glasses and shakers, jugs, decanters and smoking accessories.”
The range also included honey and jam pots, dressing table sets for mum and even the occasional vase.
The enamelling was not just the usual paint, which was much too ephemeral for Stuart’s, but made from glass with colours added, and so production was difficult.
The son of Frederick Kny, the famous engraver, who moved from
Czechoslovakia to work in Stourbridge, Ludwig’s understanding of the processes involved must have been invaluable to the project.
Decoration was applied either freehand or with an outline black transfer using a copper plate, many of which were engraved by Kny personally. The outline was then filled in with the appropriate coloured enamels, added by hand, one at a time. The piece was re-fired to fix the coloured enamels.
Enamel painting was done by teams of girls who worked in a light and airy workshop, absolutely necessary to ensure that the applied colours were “true”.
Although enamelling was quite a simple technique, its biggest problem was that the glass content of the enamel meant the piece had to be heated to temperatures close to the melting point of the crystal blanks. If the kiln’s temperature was not carefully controlled, all the glassware would slump.
“Lu Kny was quick to come up with a neat solution. He redesigned much of the basic glassware range to have strong, thickened bands at their weakest points, which meant the glass was much less likely to slump at high temperatures,” Mike says.
“Stuart’s enamelled glass was available from local department stores, but cleverly, a large quantity was also sold to the cruise lines. Having enjoyed them on your holiday, you could purchase them for home use too.
“New, fun designs were created right up to the outbreak of war.”
Production ceased on the outbreak of the Second World War. A few poor quality enamelled vases were made briefly after 1945 for sale in Woolworths, but these were unsigned.
“You are just as likely to find enamelled Stuart glassware at a car boot fair or charity shop as you are at an antiques fair,” Mike says. Prices for individual pieces are often under £50.
Look for the tiny frosted “Stuart” with an ornate letter “t” and sometimes ‘England’, all neatly placed somewhere on the base.
Avoid any pieces with noticeable loss of enamel.