Thompson Goblet

This finely enameled goblet epitomizes the quality glasses that were decorated by the celebrated Beilby workshop. William Beilby (1740–1819) learned painting and enameling while he was apprenticed to the Birmingham enameler John Haseldine during the 1750s. In 1761, Beilby formulated fire-enamel paints that fused with glass. He became known for his excellent enameling of heraldry, a choice of subject that may have been influenced by his brother Ralph Beilby (1743–1817), an engraver of heraldic emblems. William Beilby produced this goblet in collaboration with his sister Mary (1749–1797). The coat of arms can be identified as that of Beilby Thompson (1742–1799) of Micklethwaite Grange, a prosperous landowner in Collingham, Yorkshire, who studied at Cambridge University and served as a member of Parliament from 1768 to 1784 and again from 1790 to 1796. The elaborate polychrome cartouche is related to a design drawing in watercolor that is signed “TB” (for William and Mary Beilby’s brother Thomas, 1747–1826), whereas the crest on the reverse of the goblet is stylistically similar to one on a punch bowl dating from 1765, now in the Victoria and Albert Museum, London (C.43-1942). The bowl is signed “Beilby Invt, & Pinxt.” (and “Newcastle 1765”), a signature that William Beilby employed following his father’s death in 1765. Most of the glasses decorated by the Beilbys display a double series of opaque white twist stems, and they were presumably made in Newcastle glasshouses. For more on the Beilbys, see James Rush, The Ingenious Beilbys, London: Barrie and Jenkins, 1973. The design drawing that is related to the cartouche on the goblet is published in Simon Cottle, “William Beilby and the Art of Glass,” The Glass Circle Journal, v. 9, 2001, p. 40.

England, Newcastle upon Tyne

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