English glass furnishings for Eastern palaces.

In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, many European manufacturers were seeking world markets, and many Asian countries were eager for Western goods. As early as 1790, John Blades, a London glass cutter, was supplying chandeliers and table-wares to rulers in Egypt, Persia, and India, and this business increased in the early nineteenth century. (1) After 1860 several English glass companies began to make large colored chandeliers, candelabra, fountains, and furniture specifically designed for the very wealthy rulers of the Near East and India.

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Sultans Mahmud II (r. 1808-1839) and his son Abdulmecid I (r. 1839-1861) wanted to open the shrinking Ottoman Empire to European trade. In embracing modernity Abdulmecid moved from the Topkapi Palace in Constantinople (now Istanbul) to the Dolmabahce Palace, also in Istanbul, which was built in a Western architectural style between 1853 and 1855. Its Turkish features are combined with a wide range of European motifs, including a considerable number of large English and French lighting fixtures and other glass objects. One of the most remarkable features is a staircase with glass banisters (Fig. 2) that must have been installed during the construction of the building. The design for the staircase (Fig. 3) was registered by the London chandelier makers Hancock, Rixon and Dunt on March 12, 1852, in two slightly different versions. The firm also supplied the palace with a mammoth chandelier containing 644 lights, which hangs in the throne room. It is signed by the firm and dated June 1853 on the metalwork. The chandelier weighs four and a half tons, and the design for it, or a very similar chandelier, was registered on October 21, 1851. According to palace records in the Office of National Palaces in Istanbul, the chandelier was a gift to the sultan from Queen Victoria. The Dolmabahce Palace also has more than one hundred large lighting pieces, most of them English.

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Hancock, Rixon and Dunt also registered two designs for glass fireplaces (see Fig. 5) on March 3, 1852, just a few days before the glass banisters were registered. There are four glass fireplaces in the corners of the entrance hall of the palace, four more in a reception room, and two made of red glass in the small audience chamber (see Fig. 4). Although none of these fireplaces perfectly matches the registered designs, many elements are similar, and it therefore seems probable that Hancock, Rixon and Dunt made them.

The palace also has a fantastic set of eight mirrors produced by the London firm of Jonas Defries and Sons (see Fig. 6). When one was shown at the 1862 International Exhibition of Industry and Art in London, it was called the