James Powell and Sons
The firm of James Powell and Sons, also known as Whitefriars Glass, were London-based English glassmakers, leadlighters and stained-glass window manufacturers. As Whitefriars Glass, the company existed from the 17th century, but became well known as a result of the 19th-century Gothic Revival and the demand for stained glass windows.
History[edit]
Early years[edit]
In 1834 James Powell (1774–1840), then a 60-year-old London wine merchant and entrepreneur of the same family as the founder of the Scout movement, Robert Baden-Powell, 1st Baron Baden-Powell,[1] purchased the Whitefriars Glass Company, a small glassworks off Fleet Street in London, believed to have been established in 1680. Powell, and his sons Arthur and Nathanael, were newcomers to glass making, but soon acquired the necessary expertise. They experimented and developed new techniques, devoting a large part of their production to the creating of church stained glass windows. The firm acquired a large number of patents for their new ideas and became world leaders in their field, business being boosted by the building of hundreds of new churches during the Victorian era. While Powell manufactured stained glass windows, it also provided glass to other stained glass firms.
A major product of the factory was decorative quarry glass which was mass-produced by moulding and printing, rather than hand-cutting and painting. This product could be used in church windows as a cheap substitute for stained glass. It was often installed in new churches, to be later replaced by pictorial windows. Most of this quarry glass was clear, printed in black and detailed in bright yellow silver stain. Occasionally the quarries were produced in red, blue or pink glass, but these are rare. Surprisingly few entire windows of Powell quarries are to be seen in English churches, although they survive in little-seen locations such as vestries, ringing chambers and behind pipe organs. St Philip's Church, Sydney, retains a full set of Powell quarry windows, as does St Matthew's Church in Surbiton which was built in 1875 – a relatively late date for quarry windows, which may account for their survival. Powell also produced many windows in which pictorial mandorlas or roundels are set against a background of quarries.
Later Victorian period[edit]
During the latter part of the nineteenth century, the firm formed a close association with leading architects and designers such as T. G. Jackson, Edward Burne-Jones, William De Morgan and James Doyle. Whitefriars produced the glass that Philip Webb used in his designs for William Morris. The firm's production diversified in the 1850s to include domestic table glass after supplying the glassware for William Morris's Red House.
Archives[edit]
The firm's archives are split between several museums: the business records are held by the Museum of London, their designs are in the Archive of Art & Design at the Victoria and Albert Museum, and their cartoons (or, preparatory drawings) are at the Rakow Research Library of the Corning Museum of Glass.[8]
In 2008 the Museum of London gifted the Rakow Library the Whitefriars Collection, consisting of 1,800 cartoons (or working drawings). The Rakow Library received a grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services to develop an innovative methodology for preserving, digitizing, and making accessible this collection. Preservation work undertaken includes cartoons from Fourmaintraux's windows in St. Peter’s Church, Lawrence Weston, Bristol, and for the War Memorial in Auckland, New Zealand.[9]
A pen and ink and watercolour drawing for Fourmaintraux's design of an abstract dalle de verre window for the 'Golden Ball', public house, Campo Lane, Sheffield is now in the Victoria and Albert Museum, London.[10] The museum also holds a pen and ink and watercolour drawing for 15 small stained-glass windows of abstract design for Narberth Crematorium, near Porthcawl.[11]
James Powell (1774-1840)
The Old Glass House in Tudor St
Harry James Powell
The new factory in Wealdstone
