Glass Message Board
Glass Discussion & Research. NO IDENTIFICATION REQUESTS here please. => British & Irish Glass => Topic started by: josordoni on May 22, 2007, 10:00:35 AM
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I have been approached by a student studying for a BA in Glass, writing a dissertation on the glass button industry. She has asked me if I have any information on Glass Developments Ltd of Brixton (I have several of their buttons ). The only info I found was on an old auction site, ( http://www.kerrytaylorauctions.com/lastsale.php very very interesting with lots of pics of glass buttons) and on the Glass Museum site.
Do we have any further info on them I can pass on?
thanks!
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Hi Lynne,
Your student may have to get her skates on.
If we are talking same company, the company started 1944, and moved into precision instruments.
Address is/was 55 Acre Lane, Brixton, SW2 5TN, and is currently in liquidation. Accountants tend to throw old papers, so if she can discover which accountants are handling the winding up, then she may be able to ask for old product brochures etc.
Regards,
Marcus
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Thanks Marcus, passed that on to her.
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hmmmmm name/address not in BT phone book.
I checked the company house details, last accounts filed in 1990, so they may be long gone...
thanks anyway
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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
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thank you! not too late at all, it is always interesting to learn something new.
The Glass Development buttons that I had were really lovely and of excellent quality. Thank you again for this piece of the jigsaw puzzle.
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I have a glass button with an elephant pressed into it, in relief, and a slightly silvered background to it. I believe it to be by Pirelli.
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what is the back like on it Sue?
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Outer rim of clear glass, inner ring of greyish material, central to that, a round brass plaque (sort of shaped like a hat with a wide rim, with a loop on top, circular brass ring of wire overlapping itself, so the button can be detached when the garment is washed.)
No writing on the brass plaque, I'm afraid. On the front, the greyish stuff shows silver behind the quite nicely moulded elephant shape - which isn't exactly central to the blob of glass.
I found it in "my" desk when I started my first proper job, in '75. I kind of appropriated it for my lab coat (back in those days they only came with detachable buttons), then sort of just kept it...... little tea-leaf! :-[