Dutch decoration of English glass

JSGT 1957 V41 T229-T244

In the decoration of glass, Dutch artists were supreme with the diamond-point during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and reached a high standard with wheel-engraving in the late seventeenth and the eighteenth centuries. It has long been recognised that many seventeenth-century glasses with English connections are likely to have been decorated by Dutch artists, and this article attempts to indicate which glasses are English but decorated by Netherlands artists, and which were made and decorated in the Netherlands. In the eighteenth century, English lead glass was much admired on the Continent, and formed a favoured vehicle for the Dutch engravers, whether with diamond-point or with wheel. Constant attempts, however, were made on the Continent to reproduce English crystal and to make glasses in the English style. It is therefore necessary to be alive to the possibility that an English-looking glass is in fact Netherlands-made, and the article discusses the centres where this glass might have been produced, as well as the style of engraving and cutting with which both English and Netherlands glasses were decorated.

R. J. Charleson