By chance I found this enquiry and it may be too late for the student but my father (Istvan Komaromy)used to make buttons for the company and I've recently found an old copy letter attesting that Bimini had copied his designs! He wrote: I noted your reference to Bimini’s glass buttons in your very clever “What’s Where in London”. Apart from thinking that you might like to include me since I am unique in my field, I would like to mention that it was I who made the first hand-made glass buttons and Bimini (of whom I used to think very well in his field) carried on.
In the very beginning of the war, a manager of an exclusive Regent Street firm, whose owner was collecting my work, finding short supply of interesting foreign buttons, approached me to see if I could make some in interesting designs. As people were not very keen on buying my glass statues because of the war, I accepted the idea and so the first glass buttons were born, made by myself in various coloured glass. I also made little buttons, tortoises, dominoes, dice, doves and little golden ducklings. I also designed some abstract medals and coins with gold and silver colouring. I did this for a very short time only and passed the making of them over to a then small firm, but now a rather extensive and sophisticated scientific instrument maker, called Glass Development Ltd. They are still in the same place as at that time in Brixton. I, however, did return to my speciality in which, with all modesty, I can state I am unique and, therefore, it is part of my life, love and all.
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Incidentally, Glass Development Ltd engaged me as a kind of ‘teacher-come-efficiency expert’ and, as a result, produced quite a number of the medallion coins, buttons, etc, most of which must have been shipped to the USA.
I would also like to say that the description of Bimini should not be a ‘glass blower’. He was trained as a scientific instrument maker in glass but changed his work and produced mainly blown glass articles of artistic merit. These were entirely hand-made, well-balanced ballooned articles of definite value and you can come across some of his work like my own in several European museums. However, his work was not well enough appreciated by the British public for the simple reason of insufficient knowledge and appreciation of the many possible ways of working in glass. It was this and the necessity of ‘bread and butter’ that drove him to produce glass buttons as previously I had done because of the war.
Hope this may be of interest.
Chris Burley
Topic: Glass Developments Brixton (Read 5233 times)
