Sowerby Glass - from
The Glass Encyclopedia

A short explanation of Sowerby Glass:

There is a record of Sowerby Glassworks in Gateshead, North East of England as early as 1807, but very little is known about the glass they produced. We do know that the company had an art glass workshop from 1870 to around 1888. They made high quality, hand-blown, Venetian-style glass and initially employed workers brought from Italy.

But it is Sowerby's high quality pressed glass that is best know today. They made a vast array of designs, styles, and products in pressed glass over the hundred years from the 1870's to 1972. During the years 1876 to 1888 Sowerby reproduced a range of the best art designs of the period, and they produced it in large volumes. In 1882 one of Sowerbv's four glassworks was Sowerby's Ellison Street Glassworks, and it was recorded as the largest pressed glass operation in the world employing nearly a thousand men. They made pressed glass copies of designs by Christopher Dresser, by Walter Crane, reproductions of Egyptian and Japanese designs, copies of Wedgwood pottery. Although Walter Crane once said the less machinery has to do with art the better, there is no doubt that Sowerby's were bringing art to the millions by making beautiful pieces affordable.

John G Sowerby, who joined his father's company as a manager in 1871, was a successful painter and illustrator of children's books in his own right. He was closely involved with the artists of the Arts and Crafts Movement and the Aesthetic movement which prevailed in Britain at that time. It was his influence that led Sowerby's to use popular designs from the leading artists and faithfully reproduce in glass the drawings notably of Walter Crane.

These artistic designs were almost entirely on the surface of the glass. The posy holders and vases were attractive, imaginative, with beautiful decoration. But the art went into design of the moulds, and the pieces were then produced in their hundreds by hand pressing the glass.

They produced a wide range of products in vitroporcelein or glass-that-looks-like-porcelein, and their most common colours were turquoise blue, white, ivory, malachite (glass with streaks like marble) in purple, blue and brown, and clear flint glass.

The company's logo of a peacock's head (shown above left) was used from 1876 to1930. It is not on all their pieces, especially in the later years.

In the 1930's the company had new designs (the Tynesyde Glassware series), new mold makers (from Bohemia) and new technology which made good quality glass cheaper. But their success did not survive the second world war, and after the war they had too many employees and not enough work. By 1956 they were going bankrupt, and the company was taken over by Suntex Safety Glass Industries Limited who continued to make household glassware, ornaments and vases on the site until 1972, when the coloured glass part of the company's operation was moved to Nazeing Glassworks in the South of England.

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References, Sources & Further Reading:

Here are some books that contain information about Sowerby Glass. Click on the book covers or titles to read more about the books.

• Sowerby: Gateshead Glass (Aug 1986) by Simon Cottle. This is "the" book for identifying and understanding Sowerby Glass. It doesn't matter that its an old book - the information doesn't date. Published by the Tyne and Wear museums service.


• British Glass 1800-1914, by Charles R. Hajdamach, (1991) The first of his two excellent books, this one covering all the major glassworks of the 19th and early 20th centuries.


• An Alarming Accident, or Every Glass Tells a Story: The Forgotten Engraved Glass of North East England (Sep 2008) by John Brook and William Cowan. Disaster Glass research results.


• 20th Century British Glass (Oct 2009) by Charles R. Hajdamach. The second of these two major books, this one covering the later period.


• English Pressed Glass by Raymond Slack (Oct 1987). An excellent reference book on English glass factories in the late 19th century. Particularly good coverage of Sowerby, Davidson, Greener, Heppell, Moore and the Manchester area glassworks. Includes a table of registration numbers.


• A Pattern Book of Fancy Goods Manufactured in Glass By the Sowerbys Ellison Glass Works Ltd Gateshead-on-Tyne (1982) reproduction of Sowerby pattern book by Sowerbys Ellison.


• The Identification of English Pressed Glass, 1842-1908 by Jenny Thompson (Jan 1990).


• Nineteenth Century British Glass by Hugh Wakefield (1982). Good covereage of the early 19th C glass including cut crystal, Victorian coloured glass, engraved glass but only a short piece about pressed glass.


• Victorian Decorative Glass 1850-1914, by Mervyn Gulliver, (2002). Good coverage of elaborate Victorian hand-blown and coloured glass including Richardson, Stevens and Williams, Stuart, Webb, Boulton and Mills, Burtles Tate, and John Walsh Walsh.


• English Purple Slag Glass (Jan 2000) an article by Patricia McCulley in Glass Collector's Digest Vol XIII number 4, 2000.

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