Sally & Willie Clegg moved to Nettlebed in 1971 from London opening their shop in the ‘Old Red Lion’. It was a great run for Americans and the London trade and soon they sold 80% of their purchases within the first week and bought a whole van load of fresh stock in every day – heady times!.
Soon Harvey Ferry began to run goods to them in the evenings and they would have a deal over a bottle of wine; they had met in Dunstable where Harvey had a shop next door to Willie’s cousin, David Clegg where Willie had been working.
It wasn’t long before Willie & Harvey were going on monthly buying trips together to Wales and later Yorkshire, Northumberland and Cumbria. When those areas began to dry up they added Scotland to make the two day trip into three with Shore Porters collecting what they couldn’t fit into their car. Harvey bought the shop when Willie and Sally moved house.
After the 1980-81 recession they went round their calls buying all the pieces we had previously resisted on ten days credit and bribed the manager to collect everything and deliver in five days and filled an articulated lorry to the roof with the best period goods. All trade and other customers were rung with the date of arrival and luckily, being a sunny day the goods were unloaded outside the shop in Nettlebed and 80% sold that day! They were back in business!
After twenty years dealing in the best period furniture Harvey & Willie bought The Country Seat’s Mediaeval premises Huntercombe Manor Barn less that two miles from the old Nettlebed shop. This needed
re-roofing and a minimal refurbishment; they decided to specialise in furniture of the 19th and early 20th centuries holding their first exhibition ‘Signed & Designed’ in 1990; the furniture was displayed with a smattering of Christopher Dresser Art Pottery and metalwork and almost sold out! William Bicknell ran the business for them.
During the 1990s when business was slow, they looked at some 20th century furniture and lighting mostly by the big names and decided to exhibit at the 20th century Fair at Olympia. At the start of the bigger second event, they spotted some glass they fancied in a small cabinet; they were told to come back the next day as the owners hadn’t come down from the North and we could have a better price for volume!
Shortly before this, they had had a Benson lighting and metalwork exhibition; some of the opaline shades were much finer and better designed and they discovered they were Powell. They discovered the glass in the cabinet at Olympia was Whitefriars and soon after found out that Powell was the family who owned Whitefriars. Shortly afterwards they were offered a good collection of 1930s Whitefriars from a friend of the Olympian vendors which they bought in three stages – so from 30 pieces they then had 330!
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Then came an unexpected call; the original Olympian owner asked if they might be interested in their own collection… they drove to the North of England and saw room after room full of Whitefriars much of it pre-1900 Powell glass. Willie & Harvey were very interested and through the kindness of the vendors a staged purchase was arranged with the prized Powell pieces purchased last! They now had a huge variety of different examples and still carry over 1000 pieces in an ever changing stock as collections large and small find their way to The Country Seat and collectors follow.
Whitefriars has been kind to us, they say, both in the enjoyment of handling each piece and through the interesting clients they have met through this vibrant and stylish glass from a factory that closed in 1980 after over 300 years of production  |
Up until 1850 there is little to distinguish their production from other producers using the chair system of blowing, but in 1858 a commission from the architect Philip Webb who was designing a large service for William Morris’ Red House, changed the house style dramatically |
from the heavy cut form of the period to the first Venetian style glass produced in 19th century England. |
Significantly this was a large step which became a tradition as the architect T G Jackson designed a service twenty years later with a more modern looking ogee bulge and finer feet. From 1875 Harry Powell, whose family owned the Whitefriars Works, began to design all the glass in a very distinct style which anticipated Arts & Crafts. He was a many talented man who also ran the business and experimented with new techniques and colours having studied at Oxford.
William Morris remained a significant wholesale customer and as did
W A S Benson, the metalworker. Harry Powell’s talent was given a posthumous boost after he had moved the works from Whitefriars to Harrow Weald in 1923, when he won a gold medal at the Great Paris 1925 Exhibition.
Little happened in business during the 1920s except the Stained Glass Department was very busy with memorial windows.
By the 1930s Barnaby Powell had become chief designer creating a modern style with heavier glass and stronger colours. He was influenced by H Dunne-Cooke, an entrepreneur designer, who chose Whitefriars to make prototypes for the Wealdstone/Weidart range which he designed in 1923 with Barnaby Powell.
During the very successful 1930s Whitefriars also had two other good designers for domestic decorative glass, James Hogan and William Wilson both of whom went on to run the firm which was employing 350 men. Hogan introduced the new ruby glass.
After 1949 Bill Wilson ran the firm and when business in domestic glass firmed up in the early 1950s, found an RCA design student called Geoffrey Baxter who started work for Whitefriars in 1954. Initially he designed some amazing shapes in the Scandinavian style with Nordic colours but by 1966 he introduced a new range of large mould blown soda glass shapes with textured bodies and new colour which evolved into bright colours and by 1968 tangerine, ruby and kingfisher in the pop-art shapes which chimed in with the music of that era.
These were Halcyon days of great success and these large striking pieces were purchased by the lady of the house as an act of independence out of squirreled housekeeping money!
Baxter was by now an international design figure but demand flagged in the 1970s with the works being sold in 1980 for development.
Postscript
Whitefriars can still be identified in spite of the fact it was only marked with paper labels – usually long gone. Colours are distinctive as are the shapes but more notable is the quality of the flint glass which rings long and loud. The glass is very durable due to good annealing [cooling] and quality of mix.
Willie & Harvey still deal in designed furniture of all dates as well as Whitefriars
The Country Seat
Huntercombe Manor Barn
Huntercombe
Oxon
RG9 5RY
01491 641349
www.thecountryseat.com
