Waterford Crystal: The Creation of a Global Brand

By John M. Hearne

Waterford Crystal is the first ever fully illustrated history of Ireland's most iconic cut-glass manufacturer, its name synonymous with high-end glassmaking throughout the world.

Former Waterford glass cutter and local historian John Hearne explores how the art of glassmaking first arrived in Waterford at the turn of the sixteenth century. Hearne reveals how Waterford Crystal developed as a brand under the guidance of skilled artisans and shrewd business leaders with an eye for ingenuity. Waterford developed a global reputation for quality glass and crystalware that was rocked and buoyed by events that span centuries, including the American Revolutionary war, the World Fair in London, World War Two and the attacks of 9/11.

A testament to innovations in design and brilliant marketing strategy, Waterford Crystal also examines the brand's failures - dubious accountancy practices that led to a long and bitter strike in 1990; the avarice and self-aggrandisement that ultimately led to the company's demise in 2009.

Preserving the memory and legacy of Waterford Crystal for future generations of glassmaking, Hearne pays tribute to some of the finest artisans Ireland has ever produced, whose passionate devotion prefigured inspired works of art - turning basic ingredients, sand and ash, into objects of aesthetic beauty.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Merrion Press
• Release date: Nov 5, 2018
• ISBN: 9781785371837

John M. Hearne

John M. Hearne is a former teacher, lecturer and master cutter. His previous works include Thomas Francis Meagher: The Making of an Irish American (ed., 2005), Glassmaking in Ireland: From the Medieval to the Contemporary (ed., 2010), and A History of the City of Waterford Vocational Education Committee, 1930–2013 (2014).

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WATERFORD

CRYSTAL

First published in 2017

An imprint of Irish Academic Press

10 George’s Street

Newbridge

Co. Kildare

Ireland

www.merrionpress.ie

© John M. Hearne, 2017

9781785371813 (Paperback)

9781785371905 (Limited Edition Hardback)

9781785371820 (Kindle)

9781785371837 (Epub)

9781785371844 (PDF)

British Library Cataloging in Publication Data.

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data. An entry can be found on request.

All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved alone, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

Design by VermillionDesign.com

Typeset in Baskerville and Bodoni

Cover design by VermillionDesign.com

Front cover/jacket: Decanter, 1804 and Jug, 1830 (Waterford Museum of Treasures).

Back cover/jacket: Romanoff chandelier, 1953 (David Cretzan).

Front flap, right: Waterford crystal harp and eagle, presented to President William J. Clinton in recognition of his contribution to the peace process in Northern Ireland (William J. Clinton Presidential Library and Museum); left: Josef Cretzan, 1961 (National Geographic Creative. Photographer: Robert F. Sissins).

Back flap, right: Penrose decanter 1789 (Waterford Museum of Treasures);

left: Presentation of Waterford scale replica of the Statue of Liberty by Taoiseach Garret FitzGerald to President Ronald Reagan; Vice President George H. Bush and his wife, Barbara, also pictured (Waterford City Archives).

WATERFORD

CRYSTAL

The Creation of a Global Brand

1700–2009

John M. Hearne

For Dylan Alva and Zoe

If any one faculty of our nature may be called more

wonderful than the rest, I do think it is memory.

– Jane Austen, Mansfield Park.

CONTENTS

Foreword

Prologue

Chapter 1 From Penrose to Gatchell, 1700–1823

Chapter 2 A Harsh Economic Environment, 1824–1835

Chapter 3 Feud, Strike, Closure, 1835–1851

Chapter 4 Attempts at Revival, 1851–1946

Chapter 5 Revival, 1946–1960

Chapter 6 Branding the Future, 1960–1984

Chapter 7 On the Brink of Closure, 1985–1994

Chapter 8 Of Hubris and Nemesis, 1995–2009

Epilogue

Appendices

Endnotes

Abbreviations

Glossary

Note on Financial Accounts and Currencies

Bibliography

Acknowledgements

Index

FOREWORD

Waterford City has a proud history of industrial design, invention and creativity. In common with many of its European peers, its history of commerce is bounded by its trading ability and access to international networks. One part of Waterford’s traditional industrial heritage, which is alive and well today, is its tradition of crystal making, almost exclusively associated, due to its dominance, with Waterford Crystal. Indeed, some would argue that its importance was, and perhaps still is, reflective of the very culture of the place: the fortunes of the city, especially in the last century, were made in Waterford Crystal. The city had become eponymous with the brand, becoming known as the ‘crystal city’. Dr John M. Hearne is our foremost historian of crystal and with this book has provided the first comprehensive or baseline study of the history of the business of Waterford Crystal from 1700 to 2009. It is an immense contribution to Irish scholarship in business and social history and is a result of a long-term research passion and dedication. Over the last thirty years, John has become an international expert on Waterford Crystal, and this book provides future scholars with benchmark data on which to start new studies and, for the general reader, insights into how the evolution of a business can affect and shape local and national identity. In my view not enough of our national conversation focuses on business history and how this also informs and fashions our society.

Dr Hearne masterfully interweaves the almost mythical historical powerhouses of the company with the craftspeople whom, without question, created and maintained, to today, a brand that is synonymous with the highest of quality. This layering gives us a socio-technical perspective of the business’s history – a view of a unique glassmaking community in Ireland. While the family and corporate names associated with the company are the stuff of legend and debate ­– such as Penrose, Gatchell, Fitzpatrick, McGrath, Griffin, O’Reilly, Waterford Crystal PLC – the names of glassmakers, cutters, designers and technical innovators are paralleled at every stage in this work, some of whom are lesser known and others whom are part of the rich cultural legacy, for example, Bačik, Havel, Kennedy, Wall, Hayes, Cretzan, Plattner and Carelli. The quality of the work of the craftspeople behind the brand is beautifully illustrated in the book, which also acts as a photographic record of advanced skill. Indeed, a major contribution to this skill and to the quality of the product was by workers from outside Ireland who became embedded in the local community. The snapshots on the lives and backgrounds of the people behind the glassmaking community in Waterford are one of the joys of reading this book.

The history of Waterford Crystal is founded in people and place but is of national and international in significance. Dr Hearne’s book is replete with numbers and customer stories which demonstrate the contribution and impact of Waterford Crystal to Ireland and its international reputation over the centuries. How the Waterford Crystal bowl became an annual symbol of the friendship between Ireland and the United States of America in 1953 is one of my favourites. Part of the company’s survival, revival(s) and success lay in its effort to distinguish itself as a quality producer and, with this, the building of a global brand reputation. From its early days it was in demand by famous people, politicians, and those who knew style and quality. In its initial years it easily replaced imports and became a huge exporter, and in the 1970s was a significant contributor to Ireland’s import–export balance sheet. The development of the company from the 1950s onwards was an important part of Ireland’s indigenous industrial development policy and the government and its agencies, including Waterford Corporation, were part of its success. An indicator of this importance was its ability to recruit Seán Lemass to its board a month after his resignation as Taoiseach in November 1966. The book does a great job of recalling how Waterford Crystal in the twentieth century was not just one of the most important Irish companies but was a symbol of national pride and of its ability to build an industrial base as a new nation.

Every Waterfordian has a Crystal story. Many of these in recent times may be of its economic decline and who is to blame for same. Indeed, Dr Hearne’s analysis provides stark data on the latter whether one agrees with his conclusions or not. The wider glassmaking community which developed the company’s legacy over the centuries is perceived by many to have slowly unravelled since the 1980s, and many of the consequences of the company’s collapse in 2009 make for chilling reading, especially, the problems in the pension fund. As with many parts of this book, even in its contemporary history, there are so many avenues for wider research into nearly every aspect of corporate, worker, and community relations that it adds significantly to our understanding of the evolution of commerce and community in Ireland. There is definitely something special about Waterford Crystal. The commitment of its many cast of characters to its quality sustained it through many difficult periods and has ushered in a new period of success. Its current owners are a Finish company, Fiskars, which appears to have major plans for its future. People and place can do special things and have created the iconic product and brand that is Waterford Crystal. I might leave the final word to the Sunday Times newspaper piece, quoted in the book, from 1966 on its recommendation to buy the shares in the newly created public company: ‘old Waterford was often handled as fondly as Ming or Meissen’. This book brings to life the magic of the history of a great global brand created by the people and place of Waterford.

Dr Thomas O’Toole

Head of School of Business

Waterford Institute of Technology

October 2018

PROLOGUE

How do you make a memory? It’s no metaphor to feel the influence of the dead in the world, just as it’s no metaphor to hear the amplification of past achievements, of past glories, of past disappointments. Human memory is encoded in air currents, in river sediment, in instinct. In eskers of ash and sand waiting to be scooped up, lives reconstituted. But how does the past influence or inhabit the future and in what form? How many years must pass before the difference between myth and reality erodes, before truth replaces fable, before triumph and failure are acknowledged, before one accepts their part in the failure and becomes comfortable with their contribution to success, to beauty and to the enrichment of memory for future generations to behold. We all long for place, for perpetuity of sorts, but place also yearns, be it physically or through memory. And nowhere is memory so potent or visceral than in glassmaking. It is where the ghosts of past millennia, these reconstituted lives, make molecular passage into the hands, mouths, eyes, lungs and intuition of the craftsman enabling him turn craft into art. An acquired knowledge. Perhaps memory is, to paraphrase Julian Barnes, the persistent ‘noise of time’.¹

ART

When one enters the glass industry, one is bombarded by a cacophony of archaic terminology, of numerical coding and formulae that to the apprentice must seem like he has entered the ancient Egyptian world of hieroglyphics without the aid of the Rosetta Stone. However, as he traverses the various stages of apprenticeship, like tears following the imperfections on skin, acquired knowledge, as if by default, enables that encoding. It is a gradual and continuous process, because glass, like all crafts, never reveals all of its secrets. Nor should it. Fintan O’Toole once described craft as ‘Art’s less glamorous sister’. Craft, he maintains, is in many ways a reaction against consumer homogeneity. Craftwork was and perhaps still is, for most, associated with working with one’s hands, making functional objects for non-aesthetic purposes, although this definition has perhaps been eroded as much contemporary craft is not functional though nonetheless elegant and beautiful. And nowhere can this dichotomy be better seen than in contemporary glass. Perhaps the most ubiquitous of all craft objects, with a history stretching back 5,000 years, glass is both functional and non-functional. Its ingredients could not be more basic: sand and ash. Though the ingredients are basic nothing could be more complicated than turning these ingredients into solid, functional form. Glass production therefore is where craft is seen at its most creative, alluring and seductive but nonetheless the most difficult of mediums.² It is where human ingenuity combines with technological innovation and embodied knowledge to produce objects of beauty, be they functional or non-functional. Glass is where craft becomes art; and art itself is in many ways the whisper or echo of history.

Early-seventeenth-century glasshouses and woodlands in Ireland (Woodland after McCracken 1971 redrawn by Catherine Martin). (Jean Farrelly)

HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

Glass was not unknown in prehistoric Europe. Indeed, from the Bronze Age onwards, it was increasingly used in the form of decorative beads, occasional bangles, many of which have been found on sites across the British Isles including at Rathgall, County Wicklow, and Lough Gur, County Limerick.³ Although there are references to glass-workers/glaziers in Ireland as early as the thirteenth century, most historians and archaeologists are convinced that glassmaking did not begin in Ireland until the late sixteenth century. As such, glassmaking was late by European standards in establishing itself in Ireland. Evidence of the first glasshouse established in Ireland can be definitively dated to 1587. In that year George Longe purchased the patent from Captain Thomas Woodhouse for £300. In his petition to the Crown for a patent, Longe claimed to have ‘brought to perfection the making of glass in Ireland’.⁴ In England, glassmaking was subject to the monopoly system whereby an individual was granted the sole licence to produce and/or import glass. As a result, anyone manufacturing glass had to pay the person who controlled the monopoly for the right to trade. Longe’s glasshouse was situated in Drumfenning Woods which extended from Dungarvan, County Waterford, beyond Tallow and into County Cork. This was land confiscated by the Crown following the Desmond Rebellion, the plantation of which was undertaken by Sir Walter Raleigh in 1586. The site of the glasshouse is probably Curryglass – then called Glasshouse townland and owned by Sir Richard Boyle – and is situated near Mogeely on the Cork side of the Cork-Waterford border. This glasshouse produced broad window glass and operated from 1587 to around 1597. Some years later, several parcels of land in Curryglass, including lands called Glasshouse, were purchased by Sir Richard Boyle and this is probably the site of another, as of yet un-located, Boyle glassmaking venture. This glasshouse, about a mile south of the Curryglass enterprise, operated from 1614 to around 1618 and produced broad window glass and possibly glass vessels under the management of William Robson, an experienced English glass-maker.⁵ In 1621, in another Boyle venture, a glasshouse was erected in Ballynegery, County Waterford. While the location of this glasshouse remains unclear, it may relate to one of a group of townlands now called Ballygeiry, or possibly the townland formally called Ballingerrin-now called Glencairn- east of Lismore and south of the Blackwater.⁶ It was not until the early eighteenth century that another reference to Waterford in relation to glassmaking occurs. This time it related to an enterprise in Waterford City. In a letter to the journalist Alan Downey, Dudley Westropp mentioned that ‘Since writing my book (Irish Glass, 1920), I have found a notice in the British Mercury newspaper for June 1713: there is a glassworks for making crown and glass in Waterford in the Kingdom of Ireland.’ According to Westropp, ‘this is the earliest known Waterford glass works’.⁷ In 1729, a glassworks was established by John Head at Gurteens, near Waterford City. This was in operation for ten years and mainly manufactured bottle glass. Thereafter, glassmaking in Ireland was stymied by the introduction of the excise tax on glass in 1745.

Footed Curved Bowl. (Photographer: Noel Browne)

CHANCE

Waterford. Ireland’s oldest city. Tracing its origins as a Viking trading outpost to the first half of the ninth century, from where the city’s trading links were first formed. The city’s past bears the indelible mark of commerce, of cultural diversity and integration. Over the centuries the tentacles of these Viking trading routes were extended and exploited by Norman adventurers, Huguenot craftsmen, Quaker entrepreneurs, Protestant financiers and Irish commercial traders. Waterford was, by the late eighteenth century. a cultural melting pot; its trading routes stretched from the Americas to the Baltic and from the Mediterranean to the Black Sea. Glassmaking in Waterford is emblematic of that diverse cultural assimilation. However, history is also a matter of chance. It is the ability or failure of individuals to seize the initiative from the opportunities that present themselves as a result of human endeavour. More than any other Irish industry, the Waterford glass industry has been the beneficiary of this subtle architecture of chance. When the Penrose uncle and nephew, George and William, began their glassmaking initiative in the city in 1783, it was facilitated by the Free Trade Act of 1780 which repealed the excise duties on glass in place since 1745. These duties were increased in England and Scotland in order to pay for Britain’s involvement in the American War of Independence. This led many glass factories in England to cease trading and, as a result, many glassmakers were brought to Ireland to continue their craft there. Of these glassmakers, John Hill, whom the Penroses brought to Waterford, was the most renowned. His pedigree linked him to the beginnings of glassmaking in England. His mother was a Tyzack, a descendant of the Huguenot family from Lorraine that had fled persecution in France during the early years of the seventeenth century and credited with the development of modern glassmaking in England.⁸ Hill’s legacy was his glassmaking formulae that would enable Waterford to produce glass of the highest quality. It was this quality, the skill of its workers and the tenacity of its many owners to protect its good name, that would establish the Waterford brand.

Waterford City Coat of Arms in crystal. (Fred Curtis)

The Penrose glassworks firmly established Waterford as a glass of superior quality. But it was also facilitated by the wealth generated and accumulated as a result of over a century of prosperous trading. This provided the substantial finance necessary to establish a glassworks. Like those entrepreneurs that came before and afterwards, glassmaking in Waterford was initially a combination of English knowledge and technical know-how, and Irish capital. In Waterford, changing ownership was also a common occurrence. Following the death of George and William Penrose in 1796 and 1799 respectively, the glassworks changed hands in 1799, 1811, 1823, 1835 and 1848, until it closed in 1851. However, it was during the ownership by George Gatchell (1835–51), that the Waterford brand was firmly established. And it was this reputation, or memory, relayed through the decades, that was instrumental in the revival of the craft in 1947. Again it was foreign know-how, skill and technical knowledge, coupled with a dependence on Irish initiative and Irish capital that was responsible.

Decanter with bullseye stopper, c.1806. (Bearnes, Hampton & Littlewood)

STRUCTURE

This book can be easily divided into four parts. The first three chapters deal with the Penrose/Wright/Gatchell ownership from 1783 to 1851. The second part concentrates on the attempts to revive the craft in Waterford from 1852 to 1946, and its revival from 1947 to 1949. The contentious takeover by the McGrath/Griffin consortium in 1950, to their equally controversial sale of their shareholding in 1984, makes up the third segment. The final section, and perhaps the most disputatious, spans three decades, from 1985 to 2009. This section of the book has been the cause of many sleepless nights and has taken ten months to complete. These final two chapters have each been subjected to more than forty re-writes, such was the difficulty in dealing with many of the sensitive issues involved. It may provide uncomfortable reading for some; but I have tried to be as fair and as objective as any historian can be. It took me some time to realise that the many difficult decisions that were taken by individuals and management, especially between 1987 and 1992, were taken with one overriding motive; to ensure the survival of the company.

That the sacrifices endured during those years and every year thereafter, did not have the desired outcome, is analysed in the final chapter. An Epilogue is included to cover the aftermath of closure in 2009 and to acknowledge the work done by KPS Capital Partners in saving Waterford Crystal and Wedgwood from extinction, and in keeping a manufacturing presence – albeit small – in the city. The Fiskars Corporation purchase is briefly alluded to, with an even briefer overview of that company’s commendable corporate and ethical history. Hopefully, its governance of Waterford and Wedgwood will be a successful and profitable one for all concerned. This project has been in embryonic form for almost thirty years. A long gestation. It began while researching for my MA thesis where I came across a snippet in a local newspaper mentioning that the Maharajah of Bhutan had purchased a large suite of Waterford glass with unusual instructions. This was the exotic seed that inspired me to eventually embark on this assignment. Although over the next twenty years or so I deviated, writing and publishing on many diverse aspects of history, I always knew that I would write this book because I realised that this was a story that needed to be told, if only to give comfort to the many craftsmen and women who felt betrayed by incompetence and greed. I also want to acknowledge all those craftsmen and women who have passed away over the years, hopefully their families will find some consolation in these pages. There were many difficulties to overcome in tackling this ambitious undertaking. Firstly, many myths, historical and genealogical inaccuracies, had shrouded that history over the years. In this book I have tried to set the record straight, to dispel the myths and to present a comprehensive and coherent history of one of Ireland’s greatest entrepreneurial success stories.

Turning sand and ash into molten glass.

CHANCE II

On embarking on this project I also have been the beneficiary of chance or of Lady Luck. I interviewed Charles Bačik in 1991, a few months before he died. This provided the initial primary source material upon which the rest of my research was based. A fortuitous encounter, through LinkedIn, with John Fitzpatrick in the spring of 2017, in many ways squared the circle for me. John’s generosity in allowing me access to his father’s extensive archive has enabled me to publicly acknowledge, perhaps for the first time, the role his father, Bernard J. Fitzpatrick, played in the revival of Waterford in 1947. It is clear to me that without Bernard Fitzpatrick’s tenacity and vision, Waterford Crystal would not exist today. It would still be gathering new myths upon old ones, making it much more difficult for historians in the future to write an accurate history of the company. I have also been fortunate that a few individuals entrusted me with sensitive documents and information that had not heretofore been in the public realm. This has allowed me a better insight into important episodes of the company’s modern, turbulent history. Indeed, almost all material in this publication is, or has been, in the public domain. If there are faults in my analyses of these facts, they are mine alone.

MEMORY

This is the history of a community; a glassmaking community that has its roots embedded in the earliest European ventures in glassmaking. It is a book about people, individuals from diverse backgrounds, countries, religions, that found common cause in producing one of the world’s great iconic brands, and the pride they took in that achievement. As such, it is a cultural and social history that documents the cultural diversity and social integration that has been emblematic of Waterford’s long and proud history, and never as vividly encountered as within Waterford Crystal. This, therefore, is a tribute to some of the finest craftsmen and women that this country has ever seen. It documents how the myths of the past were, by skill, dedication, vision and hard work, transformed into reality. It shows how basic ingredients, sand and ash, were transformed into solid functional form, into objects of beauty. Turning craft into the highest form of art. This is a story about memory and its preservation. Lest we forget.

What might have been and what has been

Point to one end, which is always present.

–T.S. Eliot, ‘Burnt Norton’ ⁹

John M. Hearne, September 2018

Author’s Note

In 1981, Waterford Glass was converted into a holding company, Waterford Glass Group Limited. Thereafter, Waterford Crystal became a separate company within the group. Whereas Waterford glass and Waterford crystal were interchangeable names to describe the product since 1950, from 1982 the product was generally described as Waterford crystal.

Penrose decanter 1789. ‘Penrose Waterford’ is moulded on the base. (Waterford Museum of Treasures)

CHAPTER 1

From Penrose to Gatchell

1700–1823

The ending of the Napoleonic wars in 1815 signalled, for Waterford City and its hinterland, the end a century of sustained and unprecedented economic growth. Much of the resulting prosperity was generated from the city’s involvement in the eighteenth-century transatlantic provisions trade and although this trade route was of major economic significance to the city, Waterford’s overall trading pattern was much more complex. Since its inception as a Viking outpost in the ninth century, the city had evolved during the intervening period into a sophisticated and proficient trading entity. By the end of the eighteenth century, the diversity of this trading network witnessed her merchants having economic interests from the Baltic to the South Atlantic and from Asia Minor to the east coast of North America. Furthermore, by this time the city had developed as the economic hub of a vibrant triangular maritime commerce, linking the West Country ports of England with the Canadian island-colony of Newfoundland. This led to the consolidation of close socio-economic ties with Bristol, which had been developed during the middle ages, and the forging of similar links with Newfoundland.¹

FREE TRADE

However, the outbreak of the American revolutionary wars during the last quarter of the eighteenth century seriously dislocated this prosperous commercial route. In 1770, an embargo was imposed on the exportation of provisions to France and to the thirteen recalcitrant American colonies. Five years later the Americans retorted with a non-importation policy. In October 1774, the Continental Congress declared ‘We will not import into British America from Great Britain or Ireland any goods, wares, or merchandise whatsoever’.² This was followed in 1776 with an extension of the embargo of Irish agricultural produce to British dominions. With Irish produce now directed primarily at the British market, this distress was compounded when, two years later, Britain was included in the embargo. As around half of all English exports of copper, ironware, glassware, silk goods, printed cotton and linen goods were shipped to colonial customers, this was bound to impact on both the English and Irish economies.³ As a result, vociferous criticism from Irish merchants ensued and consequently a bill proposing free trade in provisions was read in parliament in 1778. It included the proposal to repeal the restrictions on glass exportation from Ireland which had been implemented in 1745 and, in 1780, full free trade was granted to Ireland. Thus, all restrictions to trade between Ireland and England came to an end. Although attempts to produce glass in Waterford during the first decades of the eighteenth century had failed,⁴ the initiative to revive glassmaking in Ireland and in Waterford was a direct consequence of these legislative changes enacted in Britain during the final quarter of the eighteenth century.⁵ Towards the end of the 1720s, a substantial glasshouse was located on the northern side of the River Suir, at Gurteens near Waterford City. This was probably the factory described by Rev Ryland in 1824 when he mentioned that ‘a glass-house for manufacturing bottles was situate opposite Ballycarvet: this has also gone into decay’.⁶ This glasshouse was operated by John Head and its opening was announced in the Dublin Journal in 1729.

The glasshouse near Waterford is now at work and all persons may be supplied with all sorts of flint glass, double and single, and also garden glasses, vials and other green glass ware, to be sold at reasonable prices.⁷

The Gurteens glasshouse was in operation for only ten years and is probably the establishment described by Arthur Power in his book, From the Old Waterford House, where he mentions that while on the farm of his uncle adjacent to Gurteens there was a line of houses known as Glasshouse and that old men told him that they could recall people telling them of the time when all the houses were one long room ‘where they used to be working and blowing the glass’.⁸ Head died in 1739 and in February of the following year the glasshouse was advertised to be let along with ‘… twenty-one acres of land, with a good quay, slips, warehouse, sheds and a malt-house situate close to the River Suir, within two miles of Waterford’.⁹

EXCISE TAX

Parliamentary legislation in 1745 placed prohibitive duties on the exportation of glass from Ireland. But the excise duties on glass introduced in 1745 and repealed one hundred years later, were not the glass industry’s first experience of fiscal exaction. During Cromwell’s Protectorate a tax was levied on glass and in 1695 a window tax was introduced and was not removed until 1851. The Excise Act of 1745 imposed a duty of one penny per pound weight on all raw materials used in the production of flint glass in Britain, but Ireland was exempt from this tax. However, the same act prohibited the importation of glass into Ireland, except from Britain, and forbade the exportation of glass from Ireland. As a result, Irish glass production was stymied. The act also divided glass production into five distinct and closely regulated sections. Each manufacturer was now only allowed to produce the type of glass for which they were licensed and no overlapping was permitted. For the next one hundred years the glass industry was subjected to an unrelenting quest by the Treasury to finance Britain’s various eighteenth- and nineteenth-century wars and the glass industry with its substantial profits was an easy, and perhaps, justifiable target. Indeed, technological innovation within glass manufacturing during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries enabled glass manufacturers to increase production at little additional cost – except for the initial capital outlay – and thereby increase their profits. Although what remained of the Irish glass industry benefited from the absence of an excise tax, it was dependent upon the domestic market. Then, in 1777, Irish glass production was incentivised when, as a means of financing her involvement in the American War of Independence, Britain doubled the excise duty on her own domestic glass production. English glass manufacturers, angry that Irish manufacturers were now exempt from these crippling taxes, contended that these duties prevented them from ‘bringing their metal to the utmost degree of purity’ and placed them at a competitive disadvantage.¹⁰ This caused considerable hardship for British glass manufacturers and, in 1778, British glass manufacturers, concerned about proposals to allow Irish glass producers to export their glass, petitioned Parliament against the move. Glassmakers in Stourbridge, Dudley, Glasgow and Bristol all claimed that Irish glass, free of duty, would undersell British glass in foreign markets. And there was general agreement that this was the case. The Stourbridge and Dudley manufacturers stated that the drawback they received on export was ‘materially less’ than the duty.¹¹ However, the Free Trade Act of 1780 allowed Irish glass to be exported duty free to Britain. The following year the Irish glass industry was further encouraged with the exempting of coal imported into Ireland for use in glass manufacturing from import duty. This particular act gave a significant advantage to Irish glass production and, when looked at in the context of the excise tax in England, it led to a loss of competitiveness for English glass exports and to the closure of many glasshouses in England. As a result, many glasshouses were established in Ireland during this time and successfully exploited the competitive advantages resulting from these legislative changes. Thus, with the prospects for English glasshouses looking grim, many artisans left Britain for foreign parts to pursue their profession in more promising surroundings. One such glassmaker was John Hill.

Shallow bowl, 1830–5. (Bearnes, Hampton