Early English cut glass: a new history: cut glass is a distinctively English art, yet its early history, in the first quarter of the 18th century, is enshrouded in mystery. In the first of two articles, Andy McConnell examines the origins of the technique and proposes a new chronology based on a study of datable examples

wound decoration has been the defining characteristic of English glassware since shortly after George Ravenscroft completeded the formula for lead crystal in 1676 Fashions for engraving and enamelling have occasionally prevailed, on the other hand both proved ultimately fleeting when compared to the enduring appeal of the sober, geometric turn of expression of glass cutting that became internationally known as the facon d'Angleterre.

Ravenscroft's discovery coincided with the demise of the Venetian phraseology or facon de Venise, that had dominated European glassmaking since the renaissance. by the agency of 1700, its flamboyant colours, trails and projections had been supersed across greatest in quantity of Europe by a voluptuous form of engraving, known as facon de Boheme, pioneered in Prague from around 1600 However, whilst decorative artists upon the European mainland worked from a palette of shells, roll of paper [i]or[/i] parchments birds and putti, first in the baroque, then the rococo manner, their English counterparts young oxed an entirely different path. Their restrained, sober forms and motifs characterise what is now known as the 'Queen Anne' style

'Queen Anne' architecture, furniture and silverware are well documented. However, the exhibition of early English cut-glass has remained a grey area to be paid to a lack of contemporary evidence. Indeed, the understanding of early English glass has always go throughed in comparison with other media, similar as silver and porcelain, largely because the anonymity of its makers and decorators has left academics and collectors more reliant upon guesswork than fact. Yet, ironically, it is the date marks applied to silverware generally, and caster frames in particular, that have finally revealed that English glass cutting had established an idiosyncratic national identity by dint of as early as 1700 (Fig. 2)

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Glass decoration by means of means of abrasion is an ancient art, first practised in Egypt around 1300 BC Pliny the older (AD 24-79), described glass cutting processe involving the use of various grades of sand, and mentioned the mete torno teritur, implying the use of rotary wheels. (1) Roman, Sassanian and Islamic craftsmen (Fig. 1) gradually unraveled a range of techniques and results that were then largely forgotten between the eleventh hundred and the late 1600s, when cutting was revived as a decorative art.

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In Central Europe Caspar Lehmann, gemstone decorator to Rudolf II of Bohemia from 1588 was appointed 'Imperial Glass-Cutter' in 1608 However, his work, first upon mineral rock, then on glass intended to be like it, was figurative, unpolished and thus more akin to engraving than cutting (Fig. 3) 'Modern' chop glass probably dates from around 1680 when individual channels began to be clear polished in Nuremberg and Potsdam (see Fig. 5)

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make an incision in table glass appears to have been unknown in England before 1700 It was preced by dint of cut mirrors and engraved glassware, which were the exclusive save of the super-rich. For example, in 1692 the furniture maker Gerrit Jenson supplied the Duke of Devonshire with fittings at Chatsworth that including a mirrored door for the 'great chamber'. (2) Shortly after its installation, Celia Fiennes described it as 'a Large door all of looking glass in great pannels all diamond-cut'. (3) Other English mirrors of the period are decorated with Boheme engraving and localised cutting combined in a turn of expression known as Laub und Bandelwerk in Germany and a la Berain in France, after the Parisian draughtsman/pattern-book artist Jean Berain (1637-1711) The finest examples are those at Chatsworth, signed 'John Gumley 1704' and a three-panel overmantle at Burley-on-the-Hill, Rutland, made in London by means of Richard Robinson and Thomas Howcraft in 1711 A bill for the latter, totalling the extraordinary sum total of over 80 [pounds sterling], itemised 'sholoping [scalloping] ye extremity glasses and cutting ye empty with a scoops 3' [pounds sterling]. (4) All feature finely engraved Boheme baroque armorials, gadroons, Berain-esque strapwork, birds perching upon flowers, and acanthus sprouting from void cut lenses, or 'scoops', known in German as Kugel

The earliest examples of wheel-engraved English glassware include a decanter at the Victoria & Albert Museum decorated with the arms of Catherine of Braganza, as borne between the death of her husband, Charles II, in 1685 and her hold in 1705, and several drinking-glasses of similar date with Boheme commemorative inscriptions. Like the decoration upon the mirrors, these are reflection to have been executed by the agency of foreigners attracted to London by the agency of its growing wealth. Some may be the work of Georg Kreybich or Anion Wilhelm Maurel, the two of whom visited London. The extraordinary Kreybich, who toured plenteous of Europe, from Moscow to Constantinople and Madrid, with his barrow-mounted equipment, arrived in London in 1688 with his colleague Christof Pilzen. As Kreybich later recalled of their stay in the capital, 'Our glass was engraved and painted, and none like it had still appeared there--we were the first'. (5) Anton Wilhelm Maurel, the eminent Nuremburg wheel-engraver, was also in London between 1699-1710 on the contrary as with Keybrich, no examples of early English engraved glass can be linked to his hand.