Footnotes

Provenance
William Whiteman Collection, exhibited in the Laing Art Gallery, Newcastle
Phillips sale, 7 June 1989, lot 23
With Asprey's, August 1989
Julius and Ann Kaplan Collection

Literature
James Rush, A Beilby Odyssey (1987), p.81, no.46
Jo Marshall, Glass Source Book (1990), p.92, no.1
Martine Newby, Eighteenth Century English Glass From the Collection of Julius and Ann Kaplan (1998), fig 16

Prince William V of Orange (1748-1806) was the last Stadtholder of the Dutch Republic. He married Princess Wilhelmina of Prussia in 1767 and this wine glass commemorates the event, combining the arms of the Nassau Princes of Orange with a shield bearing the Prussian eagle. There is a similar glass in Rotterdam Museum which may have come from the same set as the present lot.

The Beilby workshop specialised in armorial decoration and their most celebrated productions are a series of royal wine glasses and goblets. Understandably, many proudly bear the Royal arms of George III, King of Great Britain while other specimens show Dutch royal armorials. The British royal glasses mostly have bucket-shaped bowls and opaque twist stems, forms that were popular in England at the time. For his Dutch customers, however, Beilby carefully chose glasses with light-baluster stems, for he understood that these would appeal to wealthy customers in Holland.

Once known as 'Newcastle' balusters, glasses of this distinctive form are now known to have been manufactured in Holland as well as England. It is possible that the Beilbys imported undecorated light-baluster glasses from Holland, as most surviving examples of this shape with Beilby decoration have identical stems. The Beilbys will have been aware that the best glass engravers working in Holland, such as Jacob Sang, favoured the light-baluster shape for their most prestigious commissions.

Thirteen Beilby enamelled wine glasses or goblets of similar shape are recorded including the present lot. Of these, eight bear armorial decoration with direct Dutch connections. A magnificent large goblet from the A.C. Hubbard Jr. Collection, and a matching wine glass with the arms of Prince William V were both sold by Bonhams on 30 November 2011, lot 142 and 1 May 2013, lot 116. Three glasses from a different set bear the crest of the Tilly family of Haarlem together with the arrows crest of the Seven United Provinces. A further signed Beilby wine glass, in the Victoria and Albert Museum, is enamelled with a fictitious coat of arms and this was acquired in Holland by the collector William Buckley.