Museum accessions.(glassware, furniture, silverware)(Biography)

The cut-glass and ormolu fantasy illustrated at right once rose in the center of a surrounding field of cakes and puddings on an eighteenth-century dessert table. It too was heaped with candied fruits, nuts, crystallized edible flowers, and, in the topmost cup, a preserved orange, then an extravagant treat. In wavering candlelight this lofty tribute to the sweet tooth would have twinkled and winked as seductively as the Sirens.

Born of English parents in Long Island, New York, George Washington Henry Jack was trained by the Glasgow architect Horatio K. Bromhead. But his greater talents lay elsewhere, and by 1890 he was the chief furniture designer for Morris and Company in England. Among his most extraordinary designs is the inlaid secretaire cabinet illustrated below, one of only six examples known and a visual tour de force of artistic cabinetry. The earliest record of such a cabinet appeared in The Cabinet Maker and Art Furnisher in 1889, in a rendering of an example shown at the Arts and Crafts Exhibition Society in London in that year. The design was still available from Morris and Company in 1912, priced at ninety-eight guineas, making it one of the most expensive cabinets offered by the firm. The example illustrated is believed to have been made for William Knox D'Arcy, whose fortune was made in Australian gold mining and whose house, Stanmore Hall in Middlesex, England, was decorated by Morris and Company over a number of ye ars around 1890.

The lead glass stand was made in England about 1760 with all the craftsmanship such a luxurious object deserved. Each of the eight arms terminates in a gilt-metal sleeve that fits into a gilt-metal cup ...