|
NAILSEA,
a small town in the county of Somerset, a few miles from the city
of Bristol, England , was in the 19th century the location of a
glassworks, which produced ,as a sideline , a range of glassware ''friggers''.
These are small decorative items,
generally believed to have been produced at the 'end
of the day ' from the remains of the metal, i.e. the molten glass,
left in the pots.
Although the generic name of
NAILSEA Glass is used for this type of ware, it was produced at many
other places as well, and as the skilled glassworkers tended to travel
from one employer to another, the exact origins of a particular piece
can be difficult to ascertain .
I have lived in NAILSEA for
nearly forty years , and the items shown have all been acquired locally
, so even if they weren't born here they have some claim to a NAILSEA
connection!
The ruins of the NAILSEA
Glassworks are just about still here, and a lot of work has been
done on the archaeology of the site during the past ten or fifteen
years.
There is now very little left
to see on the surface and the site is destined for a new supermarket,.
However there is a great deal of documentation available as well
as examples of the ware , on view locally. The Scotch Horn Leisure
Centre and ' The Glasshouse ' public house both have examples on show,
and there is a particularly good collection at Clevedon Court a local
National Trust Property.
The original glasshouse
was built in1788 to produce mainly crown glass for windows and together
with another local glasshouse and warehousing in the nearby city of Bristol, was
known as the 'Nailsea Crown Glass and Bottle Manufacturers'.
The company was founded
by John Robert Lucas , a Bristol merchant, who sold his original beer
and cider business in order to devote himself to this new venture. The
Nailsea works was to become one of the fourmost important manufacturies
of window glass in the country during the early 19th Century, but it is
the friggers which have immortalised the name of NAILSEA among glass
collectors world wide.
The examples shown on these
pages are mostly from our own collection, but I hope to add to these as
time goes on, so keep looking.There are several collectors locally so
with luck I may get tograb some interesting images from their
collections as well . |
