Two particular objects now on show at Salford Museum and Art Gallery shine a light on a forgotten corner of Salford’s industrial history: a pair of pressed glass Punch and Judy paperweights.
Both of these unusual green items were made in Salford, and how many still remember that the city had its own glassworks?
This arcane art began for John Derbyshire when he set up the Flint Glassworks in Salford in 1872. In August the following year Derbyshire registered his first design: goblets numbered with a pattern underneath the ‘JD’ trademark.
They specialised in the revolutionary design of pressed glass.
It made the city the country’s second great centre producing pressed glass in the 19th century
It was a process where glass tablewear could be made in bulk using specially-crafted moulds. It made these once elite items cheaper and affordable even to workers in Salford.
The firm were known for their paperweights which were produced in clear, frosted and coloured glass.
Several designs are still very famous and highly sought-after today: along with Punch and Judy, the 1874 figurehead of Britannia and a winged sphinx in black glass, Derbyshire’s biggest seller was the Landseer lion paperweight; a creature modelled on the bronze lions at the foot of Nelson’s Column at Trafalgar Square in London.
The parent company became James Derbyshire and Sons, and by the 1880s was also listed at Regent Road Works in Salford.
These items and many more are now on show in the Victorian Gallery at Salford Museum, the Crescent, Salford.
