King's Lynn Glass
from the
Glass Encyclopedia

Ronald Stennett-Willson was one of the most prominent UK post-war glass designers. He had been closely involved with the Swedish glass industry during the 1950s, and in 1967 he established King's Lynn Glass in Norfolk, England. His designs at King's Lynn had the clean functional lines associated with post-war Scandinavian design, and he developed a very successful range of vases, goblets, paperweights and candlesticks. His Sheringham range of candlesticks, see above left, was one of his most celebrated early designs, and won a Queen's Design Award for Industry. These candleticks varied in height and had between one and nine discs in their stems, made in five colors amethyst, green, blue, topaz and clear.

King's Lynn Glass was sold to the Wedgwood company in 1969, and continued with the same range of glass, adding more Stennett-Willson designs and later some from Frank Thrower. Ronald Stennett-Willson stayed on as Managing Director until he reached retirement age in 1980.

Wedgwood Glass produced a number of commemorative pieces with small jasperware plaques to commemorate Queen Elizabeth's Jubilee celebrations in 1977. These were normally inscribed "Queen's Silver Jubilee 1953-1977 Wedgwood Made in England".

In addition to tableware, vases, and commemorative pieces, the King's Lynn glassworks also produced a wide range of little glass figurines of animals, birds, and fish. A number of these animal paperweights were designed for Wedgwood by David Midwinter of Midwinters Potteries, Stoke-on-Trent, (which later became part of Wedgwood-Waterford).

More than half of the staff employed when the company first opened, were skilled glass blowers from Sweden and other parts of Europe. Part of their job was to train local people in glass industry skills.

When Wedgwood became the dominant shareholder in Dartington Glass in 1982, the late Frank Thrower from Dartington Glass also contributed designs to the Wedgwood Crystal range. He had previously worked with Ronald Stennett-Willson for the UK importer of Orrefors Glass (Sweden) and amongst his designs for Wedgwood was the very heavy hexagonal or octagonal "Brutus" series of vases and bowls.

Nearby Pirelli Glass also produced glass animals in competition with Kings Lynn glass. When Pirelli Glass finally stopped operating around 1980, the last two glass artists, Mick Munns and Don Richardson, went to work for Wedgwood Glass in their lampworking section making glass animals. We have proof of this but we have never found a labelled Wedgwood lampwork glass animal.

King's Lynn glass was marked only with paper labels. Following a long Wedgwood tradition, all the glass made by Wedgwood Glass was supposed to be marked with a permanent mark. The mark is sometimes very hard to find and indeed we were told that the etching machines took a while to arrive after Wedgwood purchased King's Lynn glass, and so even during the early Wedgwood days some pieces were not permanently marked. The etched mark shown left, which appears on the Sheringham candlestick shown at top left of this page, was the first mark used by Wedgwood after they took over the Kings Lynn Glass factory.

Wedgwood became part of Waterford-Wedgwood plc in 1986 and not long afterwards Wedgwood Glass closed down. The King's Lynn glassworks was sold to Caithness Glass in 1988 and became known as Caithness Crystal. After a series of mergers and takeovers Caithness Glass was reduced to a small team of glassworkers renting a portion of the Crieff Visitor Centre.

King's Lynn glass can be found by searching for King;s Lynn or for Wedgwood Glass. Click here to see examples of Kings Lynn glass.

Click here to see Wedgwood glass currently for sale.