Not the 'Garnkirk' Vase (and not a 'Vase')

A 'Greek' Thomson design for the 1851 Great Exhibition

With minor amendments, stylistic changes, and additional image, August and September 2023

Copying the French

Typically, the idea for a Great Exhibition to be held in Great Britain came from abroad, in the most immediate case from the French, who had established a regular series of exhibitions to promote its enterprise and manufactures just after the French Revolution (although such exhibitions in fact go back even further). The Exposition des produits de l'industrie française (Exhibition of Products of French Industry) was held in September 1798 outside Paris, in a series of small temporary pavilions created by Jean-François Chalgrin, who would later design the Arc de Triomphe.

The last French exhibition before 1851 took place in a temporary structure in the Champs-Élysees over two months in 1844; it still involved only French exhibitors, but these now numbered almost 4,000. The decision in Britain to stage a truly international event, albeit one with a high percentage of British exhibitors supported by more from its colonies, was a clear attempt to demonstrate Britain’s global reach, ingenuity, and manufacturing capacity. Its success, spread over five months in London’s Hyde Park, can be seen as responsible for what followed: a range of international imitators in ever-expanding form, Expo 2020, held in Dubai from 2021 to 2022, being the latest. The Great Exhibition building, seen above, was later taken down and re-erected in a greatly modified form in south London, in an area still known as Crystal Palace despite the building’s destruction by fire in 1936.

Planning for the Great Exhibition took place over something less than 18 months, with a Royal Commission established in early 1850 for an event scheduled to open in May 1851. Thus, the timescale for artists, designers and manufacturers to submit works for consideration was short.

Fire-clay and Glasgow

A few miles north-east of Glasgow, two companies considered entries for the Great Exhibition: the Garnkirk Coal Company and Ferguson, Miller & Co at Heathfield. They occupied adjacent premises and took their clay from the same seam¹. The clay was probably discovered during exploratory mining around 1830, linked to the 1831 opening of the Garnkirk & Glasgow Railway, the first railway to serve Glasgow, and whose principal business was transporting Lanarkshire coal to Glasgow. By January 1832, fire-clay was being described as ‘extensively wrought’ in the lands of Garnkirk and Cardowan [to the south of the railway line shown below] ‘and sent along the railway to the Glasgow market’².

Fireclay was important for making fire-bricks able to withstand high temperatures in furnaces for iron, glass and other manufactures, and the Garnkirk Coal Company (as originally named) quickly obtained a judgement on its chemical composition from Thomas Thomson, Professor of Chemistry at Glasgow University, followed by testimonials from customers to whom they had supplied fire-bricks. Once fired, the clay’s light colour also made it suitable for sculpture and domestic use.

The Garnkirk estate was owned by Mark Sprot of Garnkirk (1798-1870), an Edinburgh-born advocate³ who would become a local magistrate and Deputy Lieutenant for Lanarkshire. His uncle, also Mark Sprot (1743-1808), another advocate, appears to have first purchased the estate and Garnkirk House, which was sold by the deceased Mark Sprot's trustees to his nephew around 1811. The younger Mark was in occupation by 1820, when he had the house rebuilt by architect David Hamilton (retaining the façade), the year before his marriage.

In exploiting their land, Mark and his brother Thomas (1800-1880), another advocate, drew on the expertise of James Murray, who had experience in the Port Dundas Pottery and Caledonian Pottery, both in Glasgow, who joined the Garnkirk Coal Company as a partner, remaining in that position until 1849. Garnkirk had a depot at the Garnkirk & Glasgow Railway's terminus at Townhead in Glasgow, with orders being placed through a Glasgow bookseller and stationer, Thomas Murray. He was almost definitely a relation of James, possibly a brother, since both he and James Murray, together with Mark and Thomas Sprot, were directors in the late 1840s of the Bredisholm Coal Company in nearby Baillieston, together with John A. Fullarton.

The Heathfield property was owned by Dr James Jeffray of Cardowan (1759-1848), for almost sixty years until his death Professor of Anatomy at Glasgow University. His exploitation of mineral deposits on his lands may have started slightly later than Garnkirk, but by 1834 Heathfield also had a depot at the Garnkirk & Glasgow Railway terminus. Dr Jeffray also took on a technical partner, Peter Ferguson, who by 1845 had taken control of the Heathfield works with a partner, Robert Miller, and Ferguson’s son John, with the company renamed Ferguson, Miller & Co.

Both companies produced fire-bricks, with the Garnkirk company supplying customers at home and overseas: in 1843, ‘20,000 Garnkirk Fire Bricks, very superior quality, lying at Campbell’s Wharf’ were being offered for sale in Sydney, Australia⁴. Both companies soon expanded their range of products: by 1833, Garnkirk was offering ‘ornamental vases after the antique, adapted for gardens or balconies, fancy chimney cans, &c’⁵. The ‘&c’ would include ‘tesselated paving tile, patent gas retorts, crucibles, ridge tiles, water pipes’⁶.

Garnkirk’s ornamental vases included the Florence Vase, with one version, 6 ft high and 4 ft wide, presented in 1842 to the Signet Library in Edinburgh by Thomas Sprot (who was a member). The Florence Vase was still available in 1854, and smaller versions were also created, along with a Borghese Urn.

Garnkirk also produced classical statues in terra cotta, alongside busts of Scottish notables James Watt, Henry Bell, and Robert Burns, among others. Eve at the Fountain, from an original in the Victoria & Albert Museum in London, was sculpted by Edward Hodges Baily (1788-1867), who also sculpted the statue of Nelson in Trafalgar Square, among numerous other works.

One of Ferguson, Miller’s larger works was a terra cotta reproduction of the massive Warwick Vase, excavated at Hadrian’s Villa at Tivoli by the Scottish antiquarian Gavin Hamilton about 1771, restored and then sold by him to his nephew, the 2nd Earl of Warwick, who housed it in a specially commissioned conservatory in the grounds of Warwick Castle (Although sold to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York in 1978, funds were raised to keep it in the United Kingdom, and it is currently on display at the Burrell Collection in Glasgow). Throughout the 19th Century, reproductions in gold, silver, bronze, cast iron and marble were created as parts of dinner services or as stand-alone ornaments.

Ferguson, Miller, however, seemed more adept at winning acclaim than did Garnkirk, as reported at one Glasgow exhibition:

‘We were particularly struck with an assortment of beautiful fire-clay vases in various designs in the centre of which stood a facsimile of the celebrated Warwick vase, of exquisite workmanship, all manufactured by Messrs. Ferguson, Miller and Co., of the Heathfield Fire-Brick and Pottery Works.... The same firm had in other parts of the ground a collection of chimney cans of various patterns, as well as specimens of balusters and other articles of the same material, all of the most tasteful description. The glazed water pipes manufactured by Messrs. Ferguson, Miller and Co. were successful in obtaining the prize awarded to that description of pottery. The Garnkirk Fire Clay Company also exhibited some unique specimens of pedestal stands and vases of various beautiful designs and excellent workmanship; also a figure of Eve lying beside a crystal stream gazing on her own “face divine” reflected from its glassy surface’⁷.

Great Exhibition entries

In 1851, Garnkirk offered ‘a fountain and several vases in fire-clay, besides some examples of salt-glazed ware’. But although described by the jury as ‘of fair quality and carefully worked’, their entries did not win a prize. Ferguson, Miller submitted a ‘Copy of Warwick vase, in fire clay, with pedestal'. Exhibition vase, in fire clay, with pedestal. Ornamental flower vase, with pedestal. Specimen of ornamental chimney cans, in fire clay. Variety of small models in fire clay. Specimens of glazed stoneware pipes’⁸. They were more successful, winning a Prize Medal, partly because of their ability to overcome the difficulty of modelling with sufficient accuracy to overcome the contraction resulting from the firing process.

One of Ferguson, Miller’s entries was a nuptial urn in an adapted Egyptian style, another a vase. Both have tended to be attributed to Garnkirk, despite references to Ferguson, Miller in Great Exhibition documents, probably due to Ferguson, Miller’s moulds being taken over later by the Garnkirk company. At the time, the attribution concerning both designer and manufacturer was clear, as one newspaper report on the Exhibition’s entries stated:

‘Two vases; one of them is an Egyptian nuptial vase - there are figures in basso relievo to represent the various stages of the ceremony. The figures are drawn by Mr. George Mossman, the ornaments designed by Mr. Steele, and the vase itself by Mr. Thomson, of Messrs. Baird and Thomson. The second vase is Italian in conception. The figures in relief are intended as ideal representations of all nations that furnish material for the exhibition. This design is Mr. Mossman’s. The casting of both is by Messrs. Miller and Ferguson’⁹.

The object on the left is normally termed the ‘Vase of All Nations’, showing a seated Queen Victoria, the object on the right, originally described as a nuptial urn, is what is now normally termed the ‘Garnkirk Urn’ (or doubly mistakenly, as the ‘Garnkirk Vase’: the object is capped, so could not be used as a vase).

Both objects were likely on show at the 1853 Great Industrial Exhibition in Dublin, where Ferguson, Miller exhibited a fountain in terracotta (No. 1025) as well as ‘Gothic chimney tops’, a copy of the Warwick vase, a Nuptial vase, Garden vase and other items (No 87A). At the same exhibition, the Garnkirk Coal Co. exhibited ‘Vases, flower-pots, chimney-pots, manufactured from fire-clay’ (No. 86).

It might not have won any prizes, but the Garnkirk company appears to have been the more aggressive of the two in seeking wider markets, as can be seen in the 1854 brochure below, with five separate distributors in the western United States.

In 1855, Peter Ferguson died. Shortly afterwards, the company found itself bankrupt. It managed to stave off closure by paying its creditors a quarter of what was owed, and the company continued to trade. By 1862, however, it was £6,200 in debt with assets of under £500; although the original creditors appear to have been paid off, more than half of the company’s current debt arose from losses on “consignments of sewage pipes to New York” (£2,565) and other bad debts (£1,170)¹⁰.

Heathfield continued to function, however, this time under the ownership of Hurll, Young & Co., which owned the Cardowan Works to the south of the Garnkirk & Glasgow railway. John Hurll had previously been ‘brickyard operations manager’ at the Garnkirk works in 1851, but shortly after, he joined John Young at Cardowan, which could also access the Garnkirk clay seam. By the 1870s, Cardowan produced ‘the usual varieties of fire-bricks, blast-furnace blocks, gas retorts and fittings, vases, garden edgings, and plain and ornamental chimney shafts’. At Heathfield, they produced ‘fire-bricks, and vitrified salt-glazed pipes for sewerage and water purposes, and invert sewer blocks and all the usual salt-glazed articles’¹¹. In 1865, the partners had joined with James Dunanchie to take over the fire-clay pits at nearby Glenboig; when John Hurll left the partnership in 1873 to focus on Glenboig, John Young retained control of both Cardowan and Heathfield, together with his two sons.

When Hurll, Young & Co. took over Heathfield, they did not keep at least some of the company’s moulds for vases: ‘the moulds, &c., including those of [the 1851] vases, became the property of the Garnkirk Company’. Perhaps the Garnkirk company was one of Ferguson Miller’s creditors, or the new owners preferred to focus on industrial and more basic domestic products. The implication is that, from 1862 onwards, Thomson’s design was being produced by the Garnkirk Fire-Clay Company. This may explain why John Thomson, Alexander Thomson’s son, cited it as a Garnkirk product when, in 1927, he presented to Glasgow Corporation a copy of the urn given to his father by the Garnkirk company. It was claimed as the urn shown at the 1851 Exhibition and is now in Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum (which also holds a ‘Vase of All Nations’ stamped ‘Garnkirk’).

The confusion isn’t helped by the fact that ‘Greek’ Thomson also had a direct connection with the Garnkirk company: in 1857, six years after the Great Exhibition, he was commissioned to re-design the shopfront for the Garnkirk Fireclay Company at what is today 243 Buchanan Street, described in 1891 as ‘the extremely commodious offices and showrooms of the company at the corner of Buchanan Street and Sauchiehall Street...’, with wooden scrolls on either side of the shop’s pilasters.

The shop was both an office and showroom: in 1859, to commemorate Robert Burns’ Centenary, it advertised ‘Bust of Burns!! in Fire-Clay. Price 5s. Luis Issiponi, Sculptor. To be seen at the Garnkirk Coal Coy.’s Office, 248 Buchanan Street’¹² (Luigi Issiponi was an Italian employed at least as early as 1846 as a sculptor at Garnkirk. He may have been responsible for overseeing the continuing production of classical vases, urns and new designs). Thomson’s nuptial urn was on display there as late as 1888, although the bulk of Garnkirk’s output was largely domestic: ‘Cable Edging for gardens, Manufacturers of ornamental vases, figures, fountains, balusters, and other terra cotta work’, regularly described as ‘Cheap, Durable, and Beautiful’¹³.

A pair of Nuptial Urns, sold by Lyon & Turnbull of Edinburgh for £4,808

As to the fire-clay works, Garnkirk closed in 1901, but Heathfield continued up to the late 1960s, with production ‘largely confined to sewerage pipes’¹⁴, although with some of the Victorian moulds for balusters and vases still being used.

1. Much of the information in this section is drawn from G. Quail, Garnkirk Fire-Clay, Strathkelvin District Libraries & Museums, 1985

2. D. O. Hill and G. Buchanan, ‘Views of the opening of the Glasgow and Garkirk Railway, also an account of that and other railways in Lanarkshire’, 1832 (referenced in Quail)

3. In Scotland, a lawyer

4. Sydney Morning Herald, 17 Jan 1843

5. Glasgow Herald, 20 May 1833

6. ‘Specimens of fire-brick… manufactured at Garnkirk Works, Glasgow’, no date (Mitchell Library, Glasgow 120794, referenced in Quail)

7. Glasgow Courier, 1 Aug 1850

8. Great Exhibition of the Works of all Nations 1851: Official Descriptive and Illustrated Catalogue, Vol. 2, London, 1851

9. Express (London), 5 Apr 1851

10. Glasgow Morning Journal, 6 Sep 1862

11. Llewellynn Jewitt, The Ceramic Art of Great Britain, Vol. 2, London, 1878

12. Glasgow Herald, 24 Jan 1859

13. Glasgow Property Circular and West of Scotland Weekly Advertiser, 4 Jan 1881, and Glasgow Evening Citizen, 18 Jun 1868

14. G. Quail, op. cit.