Topic: William Swingewood snr for Stevens & Williams 1920's? Hunt lampwork things

[tedwyns]

HELLO ALL,this is my first message on this site so please tell me if im doing something wrong,I HAVE 6 LARGE WINE GOBLETS WHICH I BELEIVE WERE MADE BY BILL SWINGEWOOD,each goblet has a glass bauble with lampwork animals inside,the theme is fox hunting,2 goblets have horses with riders, 2 goblets have 2 hunt dogs inside,one goblet has one hunting dog inside,and the last one has a fox on the run inside,all 6 goblets are in perfect condition,where would i get these valued,or where would i find a collector to sell these too, PLEASE SOMEONE HELP ME.

[flying free]

Hi Tedwyns welcome to the board 
I would love to see pictures of the whole set if you are able to, or wish to, upload them.  I'm afraid I can't help with a valuation and generally I think people on the board tend not to do valuations  (although someone may be willing to do so for you) as they are, in my opinion, mostly  dependent on the market at the time of selling, i.e. the buoyancy of the market and also of course, whether or not only one person is interested in the piece or many.  I would suggest you look for previous auction sales etc which could be a route to getting a ballpark figure, however I have found that finding any of these pieces, just to look at pictures alone, has been incredibly difficult - I've only come across one piece where a value was attached, and I don't know if that piece was definitely an id'd piece rather than an attribution as it was on ebay.
m

[Frank]

Good to see another named S&W lampworker added. You will find that most of the lampwork produced in one factory to be nearly identical regardless of who actually made it, although I do not doubt that the original makers would be able to say exactly who. So it is unsafe and probably wrong to assume all is Swingwewood. The problem with having few lampworkers identified is that everyone will assume the work is that of those whose 'attributed' work is published, i.e, Swingewood in Hajdamach and in various other places including GMB with different spelling, See Bridge Crystal thread.

Same issues with Pirelli, Hajdamach states Dunlop as designer and he probably did design some pieces early on but was not the main designer - still being researched. They had quite a few lampworkers and their post-Pirelli work is often identical to what they learned at Pirelli.

[Lustrousstone]

If lampwork is for production items, then to the untrained eye they should appear to be "the same", as should all hotworked or hand blown production items. The "MiL" has some birds of paradise, which may be Swingewood, that I will photograph when we see them in the next couple of weeks.

[chopin-liszt]

I understand exactly what Frank is saying - makes a great deal of sense - but what should one do to describe such items accurately then?

"Swingewood-style" is obviously a no-no.

Would folk accept "Swingewood et al."  ?

[Frank]

I would avoid the name of the individual unless well provenanced. If the piece can be identified as a particular glassworks then the name of the glassworks should be used. After all no-one attempts to name cut glass to the cutter yet each cutter has their own 'signature' that makes it possible to match pieces to a cutter and it would require the same level of skill as identifying individual lampworkers.

Always take detailed information in a book as a discrete selection of knowledge and not out of context by applying similarity.

[flying free]

Can I just query something please?  Frank, in response to my stating I had seen an attribution to a Harry Moore for a similar goblet shape with lampwork contained within the sphere in the stem, you've said, 'Good to see another named S&W lampworker added',
 whilst Mike said
'Although I might be totally wrong, I suspect this is an old mis-attribution (I think that page is a few years old and when it first appeared it was probably as good a guess as any)

-as I'd said in that earlier thread, Charles H's book was one of the first to really document the Swingewood work.

Charles told me about going through the Swingewood designs with fascination - wondering if they had all been made.'


Which leads me to question - Is Harry Moore a known lampworker for Stevens and Williams?  Did he work during the 20's?  Do we know Stevens and Williams were producing this goblet shape with the sphere in the 1920's? 
I'm just curious that William Swingewood is dated to 1935 according to a piece made that Mike has mentioned.  So did William Swingewood use the same 'device' i.e the lampwork in the sphere in a stem that had been previously designed by a Harry Moore and produced by Stevens and Williams in the 1920's?
That seems a little unlikely to me, more likely to me the attribution of 1920's is incorrect.
If it is known that Harry Moore worked there during the 1920's then I 'm thinking this attribution to Harry Moore also could be incorrect, since there are dated pieces attributed to William Swingewood in the 1930's and that anecdotal evidence has been given to Mike that he was the only lampworker at Stevens and Williams at that time.

Or does this not make sense?
m

[Frank]

While lampworkers go back a long way a lot of them worked on their own travelling from place to place to ply their trade. But then a lot of glassmakers learned and developed lampworking skills for the 1914 war effort and virtually no names are known and little information to be found. Between the wars that meant that a lot of these dispersed and probably remained in the industry utilising their lampworking skills for friggers and if they were lucky products. In 1939 the story was repeated and following WW2 many set up companies to be able to continue lampworking. Hajdamach has covered lampworking which was a welcome sight but unfortunately not as deeply researched as much of the rest of the book and does contain some errors - although hardly surprising given the paucity of documentation. But the home-grown lampworkers were not the rarity that seems to be assumed. Many continued to work in Scientific Glassblowing. Frits Akerboom who came to Scotland from Holland remained a Scientific glassmaker through to retirement, but he also developed as an artist and is credited with introducing lampwork to the Studio glass movement.

For me this remains an ongoing research project and hopefully I one day get to put together what I have uncovered.

[flying free]

Thanks Frank    Ironically I do have a friend (quite a lot older than me and retired) who recently told me he'd been to Murano and also to Ireland to Waterford (I think) in the last year.  When I asked why, he told me in a surprised tone that he'd been a Scientific Glassblower and always had an interest in glass lol.  I'd never known.
m

[Frank]

Drill him please  must have lots of knowledge, maybe of the elusive Harry Ellerway...