Lot 291
JOHN HUTTON (NEW ZEALANDER 1906-1978) FOR JAMES POWELL & SON, WHITEFRIARS GLASSWORKS §
'COVENTRY CATHEDRAL ANGEL' VASE, c.1962
Auction: MODERN MADE Part II | 01 November 2024 | Lots 80 to 444
Description
signed JOHN HUTTON, engraved No. 13-79-81, glass
Dimensions
43.5cm high, 23.5cm wide (17 1/8in high, 9 ¼in wide)
Provenance
Lyon & Turnbull, Edinburgh, Paul Reeves: An Eye for Design, 14 February 2019, lot 293;
Private Collection, London.
Footnote
Literature:
Stapleton, Annamarie, Richard Chamberlain & Geoffrey Raynor, Austerity to Affluence: British Art and Design: 1945-62, Merrell Publishers Ltd, London, 1997, pp.78-9, cat. no. G18 for an example of this vase from the series.
This vase formed part of a limited series engraved by John Hutton and is engraved with a unique arrangement of the angels and figures he had designed and engraved for the Great West Screen of the new Coventry Cathedral. The vases were engraved in the Cathedral shop for 100 guineas, a sum which reflected both the supreme quality of the glass used in the manufacture of the vessel and the hard work of Hutton. It was hoped that the sale of the vases would help with the financial deficit on its completion. One of the vases and some of Hutton’s designs for the Great West Screen are in the collection of the Sarjeant Art Gallery in Wanganui, New Zealand, where Hutton spent much of his youth and another was in the collection of Princess Margaret.
Hutton wrote to Captain N.T. Thurston of the Coventry Cathedral Reconstruction Committee in 1960 about the making and marketing of the vases and commented
“The vases only have angels engraved on them. Under the present scheme I am to engrave all the flying angels of the screen in groups of two to each vase. Each grouping will be different so that although say Angel A appears many times on different vases it is never with the same angel. There are some 326 possible different groupings on this principle so I don’t suppose I shall work through them all before I leave this world.
It means that each buyer has an exclusive object. The glass is the finest British crystal specially blown by the Whitefriars Company. It represents in size about the limit of possibility in blowing for vases.”