Extract from the
Introduction
At the height of its fame in the late Victorian era,
the company of Shrigley and Hunt ranked among the leading designers and manufacturers of stained glass in Britain, rivalling the better-known contemporaries such William Morris and Company, or James Powell of Whitefriars. At the beginning of the twenty-first century, however, the name of Shrigley and Hunt means little to the average person and not much more to the historian of stained glass. The company deserves much more recognition. Its neglect is largely due to the fact that, unlike their better-known competitors, their designers did not double up as fine artists and the firm did not remain nationally active beyond the early twentieth century. Shrigley and Hunt’s story is rather one of an emergence from provincial obscurity into a position of national high regard, followed by a period of slow decline and a return to a local level of operation, albeit of some merit.
Its success relied on a marriage between sound business acumen and talented designers. The firm’s founder, Arthur William Hunt, who was a builder’s son apprenticed to a stained glass business, possessed a shrewd business sense, knowledge of the trade and a good eye for artistic talent. In a clever move he bought an existing decorating business in Lancaster and he was able to tap into a market that could exploit the opportunities opened up by the industrial and commercial expansion in the North West. His foresight proved accurate and he rapidly exploited the domestic and ecclesiastical demands for artistic decoration.
The success of the enterprise owed quite as much to the artists Hunt chose as it did to his own energies. Carl Almquist and Edward Holmes Jewitt in particular had genius as individual designers and were also able to work as part of a team. They rank among the best of late-Victorian stained glass designers, belonging to the group of artists that followed in the wake of the Pre-Raphaelites with Burne-Jones and Henry Holiday at their head. These artists of the second generation explored the decorative qualities of the medium, while also freeing the figure from some of its historicist tendencies. Moving away from the earlier mediaevalism, they pioneered a more realist style loosely inspired by Renaissance or classical precedents. Often drawing from the model they took steps towards raising the status of stained glass to a fine art, thus upgrading the position of the designer within the arts. In doing so they also increased the accessibility of the Biblical narratives, by selecting easily understood allegories or simply presented stories.
Under Hunt, Almquist and Jewitt were encouraged to develop their talents freely and in doing so they attracted the custom of architects and laymen alike, helping the firm to attain a position equal to any of their national compatriots. Almquist had a studio opened in London for him, which led to recognition in the capital and the Home Counties, providing yet another chance to expand the business. At the height of its fame Shrigley and Hunt was patronised by some of the greatest architects of the day. Paley and Austin, the Lancaster-based architectural practice, was their most important client, while G. F. Bodley, Sir Arthur Blomfield, Richard Norman Shaw and Alfred Waterhouse were numbered among the others. Private commissions poured in from the wealthy magnates of the North West, not just the Storeys, Williamsons, Garnetts and Fosters from around Lancaster itself, but business leaders on Merseyside, the Wirral and Manchester, including the Manchester brewers Henry Boddington, and Sir Gilbert Greenall of Warrington. (continued)
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