5 - The Great Exhibition of 1851
For the exhibitors at the Great Exhibition of 1851 in London, preparation began at least a year in advance. A great deal of papers survive in the Manchester Archives detailing the stresses and strains of various companies preparing displays and attaining space for the Exhibition.
Percival, Yates & Co. requested space to exhibit glassware in May 1850. However by February 1851, the company withdrew as they felt that the space allotted to them was too small. Molineaux & Webb took the space instead and prepared glassware for the Exhibition, which was to run from May to October 1851.
Perhaps Molineaux & Webb already had an inkling that the space was coming their way. In January 1851 they placed a job advertisement in the local paper:
Enamel Painting on Glass -
Wanted, an apprentice to this department; specimens of taste will be required.
Apply to the works of Molineux, Webb, and Co. glass manufacturers, Kirby Street, Ancoats.
Great Exhibition Catalogue
The Official Descriptive and Illustrated Catalogue of the Great Exhibition described the Molineaux & Webb display as follows:
Specimens of cut, engraved, and coloured glass, consisting of water jugs and goblets, wine and other decanters and claret jugs. Finger-basins and coolers. Champagne, hock, and other glasses. Sugar-basins and cream-ewers. Flower and other vases. Dessert dishes. Centre-pieces etc.
Deaths at the company
During the Exhibition period, in July 1851, Thomas Molineaux died at the age of 51. His brief death notice in the local paper said "deservedly respected, and whose loss will be sincerely felt by all who knew him."
Then just a week or so before the Exhibition ended, Jesse Webb, glass blower and the elder brother of Thomas Webb, died.
As the Exhibition closed, Thomas Webb found himself as the last survivor of the men who had opened the glass works in 1827, just as the company was about to be rewarded for its displays.
Bronze Medal Awarded
Awards were given out to various contributors by the prize jury at the close of the Exhibition. Molineaux & Webb were awarded a prize medal for cut glass. The bronze medal award stayed in the hands of the Webb family right up until the death of Pamela Webb in 2008. It was donated to the Manchester Art Gallery in her will and can be viewed here.
The company wasted little time in using the award for publicity, and in late October they had placed an advert in the local press repeating the generous comments made of their glassware in the Art Journal Catalogue.
“PRIZE MEDAL – MANCHESTER FLINT GLASS WORKS – MOLINEAUX, WEBB & CO. take the opportunity of informing their friends that they are prepared to supply any of the articles shown by them in the Great Exhibition, and for which they have been awarded a prize medal. Engravings of the same may be seen in the Art Journal Illustrated Catalogue, page 290.”
Art Journal Remarks and Images from the Great Exhibition
“One is so apt to associate the manufacturing production of Manchester with cotton and calico as to feel some surprise to see an exhibition of beautiful glassware emanating from that busy town. Moreover it is not generally known that not less than twenty-five tons of flint glass are at the present time produced weekly in Manchester where the establishment of Messrs, Molineaux and Webb takes the lead in this department of industrial art. This house has now existed for nearly a quarter of a century, and its proprietors have paid much attention to the production of ornamental coloured glass, that it may be affirmed, without prejudice to other manufacturers in localities where such business is now carried on, that the Manchester glass is in no way inferior to the best in the country."
The images that follow are taken from page 290 of the Art Journal catalogue.
Other websites and researchers have assumed all the images on the page are Molineaux & Webb pieces, but there has been some room for doubt. For example the item named "Diomed casting his spear at Mars", this appears below but also in the list of items for Richardsons of Stourbridge, which says "opal vases, painted with enamel colours", and one of the subjects is "Diomed casting his spear at Mars."
One suspects Roger Dodsworth was also unsure of this item - in an article on the Manchester glass industry in Volume 4 of the Glass Circle, in discussing this object he says "as the vase is opalescent it is more likely to have been transfer-printed from an engraved plate, a technique usually associated with Richardson's of Wordsley."
However, an advertisement by Molineaux Webb was placed in the Art Journal in late 1851, which is illustrated with a subset of the sketches from the items shown in the Great Exhibition catalogue. The advert includes the "Diomed casting his spear at Mars" object, so we can be sure it is by Molineaux Webb.
Sugar basin of cut prisms
Grecian-shaped ruby jug, and goblet to correspond, with richly-cut sunk diamonds
This item can be found in the Number 1 Molineaux & Webb pattern book.
The design is named "Pasha", numbered 6145, and illustrated in blue.
Ruby gilt chalice in the medieval style
Opalescent vase engraved after Flaxman's design of “Diomed casting his spear at Mars"
Ruby antique jug and goblet, on which has been engraved the lotus plant
(other items not described)
Not described
Not described
International Exhibition of 1862
The next big Exhibition was held in 1862 at South Kensington, London. In 1860, David Wilkinson of Molineaux & Webb put up £200 as a guarantor for the 1862 Exhibition. However we have seen no definite sign that the company took part. If they did, they failed to repeat their success of 1851, as they were not in the list of medal winners or the list of honourable mentions. In fact there is no sign of the company appearing at major exhibitions since. In 1887 there was a large Queen Victoria Royal Jubilee Exhibition in Manchester. In the glass section, the only notable Manchester exhibitors were Percival Vickers and Burtles Tate.