Silver-mounted glass centrepiece by Harry Powell 1853–1922 James Powell & Sons, Whitefriars

Silver-mounted glass centrepiece

Harry Powell 1853–1922, designer

James Powell & Sons, Whitefriars, makers

1906

Glass with blown trailed and pulled decoration mounted in silver with and enamel heraldic shields, on a wooden stand, Hallmark to base lion passant (English silver)

15 x 10 inches (38 x 26 cm)

Leopard (London) and JP & Sons, hallmarked on the body and lid lion passant, leopard, JP & Sons and date mark 1906

Source: Masterpieces from the John Scott Collection.

See commentary below

The Fine Art Society, London, has most generously given its permission to use information, images, and text from its catalogues in the Victorian Web. This generosity has led to the creation of hundreds and hundreds of the site's most valuable documents on painting, drawing, sculpture, furniture, textiles, ceramics, glass, metalwork, and the people who created them. The copyright on text and images from their catalogues remains, of course, with the Fine Art Society. [GPL]

‘I bought this at an exhibition in London of John Powell & Sons on 11 June 1982. This is English Art Nouveau … rather restrained.’ — John Scott

Commentary

This is one of a pair of centrepieces made by Powell & Sons for Count Lionel Hirschel de Minerbi for his newly acquired Ca’Rezzonico Palace in Venice. Each handle is decorated with a pair of enamelled shields depicting the arms of the Minerbi family. The partner to it is now in the Corning Museum of Glass in the United States of America (accession no. 90.2.3). The commission comprised a huge table service of nearly four hundred pieces, all in flint with pulled green threads.

The well-documented commission was reported in an unidentified newspaper cutting which stated that, as Minerbi ‘wished to have the best glass he could procure he had come to the makers of the specimen he had bought at Turin’ [‘Foreigners beaten by British']. The 1902 Turin International Exhibition was the first to be devoted entirely to the decorative arts; Harry Powell created many remarkable new pieces for the British Pavilion, which had been organised by Walter Crane from his acquaintances at the Arts & Crafts Exhibition Society.

References

Gere, Charlotte, & Michael Whiteway. Nineteenth-Century Design: from Pugin to Mackintosh. London 1993, P.223; pl. 281.

'Foreigners beaten by British. Venetian Glass to be sent to Venice’, unidentified newspaper cutting, c.1906, Whitefriars Archive, Museum of London.

Masterpieces from the John Scott Collection. London: The Fine Art Society, No. 18.

Last modified 25 May 2014