It is the only known, intact piece of 17th-century Irish lead glass in the world - a unique Irish treasure - and it's missing. So says Belfast antiques expert, Peter Francis, who is mounting a search to locate the precious object. The chances are, he says, that somebody, somewhere owns the glass, but is unaware of its true worth and significance. The only record of its existence was in 1971, when a photograph of the glass appeared in the Price Guide to Antique Drinking Glasses. "I hope that someone will see the photograph and realise that it's in their collection," he says. Seventeenth-century Irish lead glass? You may wonder. Surely it wasn't until the 18th century that lead crystal was first produced in Ireland?
Not so, argues Francis, who has conducted painstaking research into his subject. His is a detective story, which has culminated firstly in the search for the missing glass, but even more significantly, perhaps, in the rewriting of the history of lead crystal. England, Francis argues, can no longer lay claim to pre-eminence in the manufacture of lead crystal. It is, he says, another dent in the myth that merchandise produced in Ireland was inferior to that made in England. "We were doing things as well, but differently," he says.
Glass had been around for centuries but it wasn't until the 17th century that glassmakers sought to produce a glass that was harder, clearer and more like rock crystal. By using lead in the manufacture of glass, they were able to produce a material that was more robust, brilliant and shiny than any glass before it. Until Francis's findings England had been regarded as the home of lead glass. The first patent for lead glass in England was taken out by George Ravenscroft in 1674. However, by digging around in the British Public Records Office at Kew, Francis has discovered references to the granting of a lead glass patent for Ireland only one year later - in 1675. FRANCIS got a lucky break when a Belfast historian alerted him to a letter book of a Belfast merchant, "Black" George Macartney, which covered 1678 to 1680.
"The records show that Macartney was buying glass, including lead glass, from a Captain Nichols, who had a glasshouse near Trinity College, Dublin," Francis says. "I went looking for the glasshouse and it turned out that it wasn't the same glasshouse that got the patent, so that meant that there were two glasshouses in Dublin at that time."
Francis discovered it was an Italian, John Odacio Formica, who was responsible for introducing the manufacture of lead glass into Ireland. "I've tracked him back to Genoa in the 1580s. Later, he worked in Antwerp and Brussels. In a way, he was the Irish equivalent of Ravenscroft."
Ravenscroft, however, wasn't a glassmaker, he was simply a businessman who backed an Italian called John Baptista da Costa. It was da Costa who took the lead glass-making technique to England.
"Formica, Jean Guillaume Reinier and da Costa had worked together in the 1660s in Holland," Francis notes. After the French invasion of the region, the glassmakers went their separate ways - da Costa to England, Formica to Ireland and Reinier to Sweden - to engage in lead glass production. "The exciting thing is that we now know for certain that the Dublin glasshouses are among the earliest lead glasshouses in the world," Francis says.
A further piece of the jigsaw was provided by Dr Leo Swan of the archaeological and architectural consultancy, Archtech. Back in 1996, he was excavating the basement of Templeogue House, Co Dublin, and discovered the undercroft of a castle which predated the introduction of artillery into Ireland in 1534. "We found a huge quantity of broken wine bottles and a small amount of fine table glass," Swan recalls. "The glass looked exceptional - we don't often find such fine table glass in our excavations. We reckoned that it had to have been deposited before 1730 to 1750 but that it belonged to the late 17th century, because it was accompanied by pottery which we recognised as being from that era."
It was, says Francis, the largest hoard of late 17th-century glass yet to be discovered in Ireland. "They found a range of different stem forms, which all had one thing in common - they all had a collar between the bowl and the stem. The technical term for it is a marese."
Francis was fascinated because, he says, this particular feature does not occur on glasses manufactured in England. Research conducted in England has thrown up only three glasses with the marese and these were found in Somerset. "But they have been found in Ireland - in Templeogue, in Dublin Castle in 1996 and one stem was found in Belfast." To Francis, this proves that within 10 to 15 years of the invention of lead in Holland, lead glassware of a distinctive Irish character was being produced here. Fragments of glass similar to the Irish examples have also been found in Jamaica. Francis believes that the Jamaican glass was exported from Ireland in the 17th century and that a vibrant export industry existed here, 100 years earlier than had been thought.
`In addition to having shapes and forms like the Dublin ones that have been excavated," he says, "the Jamaican glasses have more complex shapes. So we are building up a range of shapes and forms that we never realised were of Irish origin. The stems were thick, but the bowls were incredibly thin. They must have felt wonderful in the hand and wonderful to drink out of." Once Francis had identified the shape of the glasses, he went in search of existing pieces. "I looked in every glass book and every Christie's and Southeby's catalogue I could find. I found only one example in the Antiques Price Guide of 1971, but when I went to the publishers, they couldn't tell me who owned it. The picture credit was incorrect, so there's no way of knowing where the glass is. It's a mystery."
There may, of course, be other examples of 17th-century, Irish lead glassware in existence. Now that one intact piece has been identified, anything is possible. Back in 1971, the glass pictured in the Price Guide to Antique Drinking Glasses was valued at between £100 and £130. Today, its value - without the Irish connection - is closer to £1,500. However, as the only known intact piece of 17th-century Irish lead glass, its value is certainly far greater. Francis is reluctant to put a price on it. "It's a national treasure," is all he will say.
