LONDON – It’s easy to take an instant shine to former silver dealer Mark West. He started selling antique glass almost out of necessity, rather than by choice. He told me: “A little over 40 years ago, I had a stall on Saturdays in Portobello Road Market selling small silver. Arriving at 6:30 one morning, we were greeted by police who explained that burglars had broken in and cleared the place of all the silver and jewelry.
“I found a silver-mounted flask had been left on my stand – it’s so depressing when even the burglars don’t want your stock! Anyhow, I suggested to a policeman that it might have fingerprints on it that might help track down the thieves. The policeman said ‘Maybe,’ took it away and that was the last I saw of that too.
“I had dealt in silver because it was easy to learn the basics from the hallmarks but I had also gradually grown to like 19th century glass, which I found could be bought for a fraction of the price of department store crystal.”
These three amethyst over crystal glass vases designed by Joseph Simon for Val St. Lambert, Belgium, circa 1930, can cost less at an antiques show than comparable new crystal at a retail store.
Mark continued: “I had begun to buy and sell glass items and also keep interesting pieces for my own collection. On the fateful morning of the burglary, glass was all I had left and at that point my emerging career in antiques took a lurch to the side and I became a glass dealer.”
Just how far Mark has transitioned to the transparent side will be seen at Petworth Park Antiques & Fine Art Fair. He is one of 40 leading dealers in a major new addition to the fairs calendar, taking place this weekend in the grounds of Petworth House, the famous National Trust property in West Sussex.
His approach to what might otherwise seem like a dauntingly complex field of collecting is disarmingly down to earth. It fails to disguise his fascination with the subject. He said: “Glass is basically boiled sand, but the extraordinary range of things that can be done with it is almost beyond belief. My own liking is for handmade items rather than mass-produced pressed and ‘hand finished’ glass.
“Look at the range of modern clear crystal glass being sold in a large shop today and it will all be the same very bright color. Look at the same clear glass on an antique display and it will run from gray through to bright because every mix of molten glass would have been slightly different,” Mark said. This Classical Revival vase engraved with anthemion, made in Stourbridge in about 1870, will not exhibit the same bright look as clear glass produced today.
The same differences can be seen in colored glass when antique and modern are compared next to each other.
“Prior to mass-production, each glasshouse had its own different mix for making the colors. Today these colors are bought in from a very few sources, with the result that everything made using them is all very similar.”
Mark’s enthusiasm for the unique and special is infectious. Some 18th century glasses have air bubbles introduced into the molten glass and stretched when they were made, so that’s 300-year-old air. The bubbles inside the stems of these 18th century English air-twist wine glasses represents 300-year-old air.
Sets of glasses in which every one is slightly different to the next is because they are made entirely by hand. Chances are slight differences can be found in these handmade yellow rosewater sprinklers from the 1920s.
Glassmakers routinely added uranium added to the glass mix to produce fancy green and yellow colors. They glow under a blacklight and actually will set off a Geiger counter.
Vases decorated with real gold; decanters shaped by blowing the molten glass into wooden molds so the grain of the tree can be seen and felt around the the sides and many other innovative production techniques make antique glass a rewarding subject for study and collecting.
Consider also that these and other similar objects were made using often primitive tools working with molten glass with temperatures at something around 2,000 degrees centigrade.
“If you went wrong, there was no going back,” Mark said. “All you could do was bite your tongue and start again.”
Decoration on early glass was done either in the body of the glass, using cutting wheel requiring the coordinated skills of hand and eye, or on the surface by etching, engraving or enameling. Mistakes, particularly with the former, could not be rectified and weeks of work could often end as wastage and lost wages.
This enormous Bohemian jug is an example of cut glass enhanced with overall gilding. It is 12 1/2 inches high and dates to circa 1840.
Champagne saucers and flutes are perhaps among the least used drinking glasses these days, but a set of either – or both – can be an inexpensive addition to a collection. What is less well know is that champagne was decanted throughout the 19th century and even in 1930, a particular English aristocrat deemed it “very middle class to serve champagne from the bottle.”
Look for wonderfully decorated jugs that were made for specifically for the purpose. A blue glass taper shaped decanter with white enamel decoration, from Northern Europe or Russia, circa 1790, might have been used to serve champagne.
“The decorative detail on the best examples is beyond most people’s drawing skills, yet these have been cut by hand into the most delicate of glass bodies,” Mark said.
His advice to the new collector? As ever, buy only what you like. “Dealers are here to tell you what something is, but you have to live with it,” Mark said.
This peacock-ware centerpiece made by Stuart for Liberty of London, circa 1905, may not be to everyone’s taste.
“Something that is unique could be because the piece was not nice in the first place. Whoever was responsible for designing it or making it never made another, so think twice before parting with money to buy it.”
He had one final comment that made us smile: Some people ask if lead will leach from a crystal decanter and affect the wine. I tell them yes it will, but if you leave your wine in a decanter that long, you deserve to be poisoned!”
Petworth Park Antiques & Fine Art Fair runs from Friday to Sunday, May 8-10. Tickets are £10, but mention Antique Central News and get two for the price of one.
The price includes free admission to the late 17th century mansion to see its treasures, which include paintings by J.M.W. Turner, Constable, Van Dyck, Reynolds and Blake; ancient and Neo-Classical sculpture; fine furniture and carvings by Grinling Gibbons and the park, landscaped by “Capability” Brown.
In a reciprocal arrangement, Petworth House ticket holders and National Trust members have free entry to the fair.
