Preview - Waterford Crystal: The Creation of a Global Brand

CONTENTS

e Foreword Prologue

vi viii

Chapter 1

From Penrose to Gatchell, 1700–1823

1

Chapter 2

A Harsh Economic Environment, 1824–1835

29

Chapter 3

Feud, Strike, Closure, 1835–1851

69

Chapter 4

Attempts at Revival, 1851–1946

93

Chapter 5

Revival, 1946–1960

105

Chapter 6

Branding the Future, 1960–1984

149

Chapter 7

On the Brink of Closure, 1985–1994

187

Chapter 8

Of Hubris and Nemesis, 1995–2009

235

Epilogue

287

Appendices

294

Endnotes

320

Abbreviations

341

Glossary

342

Note on Financial Accounts and Currencies

344

Bibliography

345

Acknowledgements

351

Index

357

PROLOGUE

e How do you make a memory? It’s no metaphor to feel the influence of the dead in the world, just as it’s no metaphor to hear the amplification of past achievements, of past glories, of past disappointments. Human memory is encoded in air currents, in river sediment, in instinct. In eskers of ash and sand waiting to be scooped up, lives reconstituted. But how does the past influence or inhabit the future and in what form?

How many years must pass before the difference between myth and reality erodes, before truth replaces fable, before triumph and failure are acknowledged, before one accepts their part in the failure and becomes comfortable with their contribution to success, to beauty and to the enrichment of memory for future generations to behold. We all long for place, for perpetuity of sorts, but place also yearns, be it physically or through memory.

And nowhere is memory so potent or visceral than in glassmaking. It is where the ghosts of past millennia, these reconstituted lives, make molecular passage into the hands, mouths, eyes, lungs and intuition of the craftsman enabling him turn craft into art. An acquired knowledge. Perhaps memory is, to paraphrase Julian Barnes, the persistent ‘noise of time’.1

ART When one enters the glass industry, one is bombarded by a cacophony of archaic terminology, of numerical coding and formulae that to the apprentice must seem like he has entered the ancient Egyptian world of hieroglyphics without the aid of the Rosetta Stone. However, as he traverses the various stages of apprenticeship, like tears following the imperfections on skin, acquired knowledge, as if by default, enables that encoding. It is a gradual and continuous process, because glass, like all crafts, never reveals all of its secrets.

Nor should it. Fintan O’Toole once described craft as ‘Art’s less glamorous sister’. Craft, he maintains, is in many ways a reaction against consumer homogeneity. Craftwork was and perhaps still is, for most, associated with working with one’s hands, making functional objects for non-aesthetic purposes, although this definition has perhaps been eroded as much contemporary craft is not functional though nonetheless elegant and beautiful. And nowhere can this dichotomy be better seen than in contemporary glass. Perhaps the most ubiquitous of all craft objects, with a history stretching back 5,000 years, glass is both functional and non-functional. Its ingredients could not be more basic: sand and ash.

PROLOGUE | viii

Though the ingredients are basic nothing could be more complicated than turning these ingredients into solid, functional form. Glass production therefore is where craft is seen at its most creative, alluring and seductive but nonetheless the most difficult of mediums.2 It is where human ingenuity combines with technological innovation and embodied knowledge to produce objects of beauty, be they functional or non-functional. Glass is where craft becomes art; and art itself is in many ways the whisper or echo of history.

left :

Early-seventeenthcentury glasshouses and woodlands in Ireland (Woodland after McCracken 1971 redrawn by Catherine Martin). (Jean Farrelly)

HISTORICAL BACKGROUND Glass was not unknown in prehistoric Europe. Indeed, from the Bronze Age onwards, it was increasingly used in the form of decorative beads, occasional bangles, many of which have been found on sites across the British Isles including at Rathgall, County Wicklow, and Lough Gur, County Limerick.3 Although there are references to glass-workers/glaziers in Ireland as early as the thirteenth century, most historians and archaeologists are convinced that glassmaking did not begin in Ireland until the late sixteenth century. As such, glassmaking was late by European standards in establishing itself in Ireland. Evidence of

ix | PROLOGUE

the first glasshouse established in Ireland can be definitively dated to 1587. In that year George Longe purchased the patent from Captain Thomas Woodhouse for £300. In his petition to the Crown for a patent, Longe claimed to have ‘brought to perfection the making of glass in Ireland’.4 In England, glassmaking was subject to the monopoly system whereby an individual was granted the sole licence to produce and/or import glass. As a result, anyone manufacturing glass had to pay the person who controlled the monopoly for the right to trade. Longe’s glasshouse was situated in Drumfenning Woods which extended from Dungarvan, County Waterford, beyond Tallow and into County Cork. This was land confiscated by the Crown following the Desmond Rebellion, the plantation of which was undertaken by Sir Walter Raleigh in 1586.

The site of the glasshouse is probably Curryglass – then called Glasshouse townland and owned by Sir Richard Boyle – and is situated near Mogeely on the Cork side of the Cork-Waterford border. This glasshouse produced broad window glass and operated from 1587 to around 1597. Some years later, several parcels of land in Curryglass, including lands called Glasshouse, were purchased

by Sir Richard Boyle and this is probably the site of another, as of yet un-located, Boyle glassmaking venture. This glasshouse, about a mile south of the Curryglass enterprise, operated from 1614 to around 1618 and produced broad window glass and possibly glass vessels under the management of William Robson, an experienced English glass-maker.5 In 1621, in another Boyle venture, a glasshouse was erected in Ballynegery, County Waterford. While the location of this glasshouse remains unclear, it may relate to one of a group of townlands now called Ballygeiry, or possibly the townland formally called Ballingerrin-now called Glencairn- east of Lismore and south of the Blackwater.6 It was not until the early eighteenth century that another reference to Waterford in relation to glassmaking occurs. This time it related to an enterprise in Waterford City. In a letter to the journalist Alan Downey, Dudley Westropp mentioned that ‘Since writing my book (Irish Glass, 1920), I have found a notice in the British Mercury newspaper for June 1713: “there is a glassworks for making crown and glass in Waterford in the Kingdom of Ireland.”’ According to Westropp, ‘this is the

PROLOGUE | x

left :

Footed Curved Bowl. (Photographer: Noel Browne)

earliest known Waterford glass works’.7 In 1729, a glassworks was established by John Head at Gurteens, near Waterford City. This was in operation for ten years and mainly manufactured bottle glass. Thereafter, glassmaking in Ireland was stymied by the introduction of the excise tax on glass in 1745.

CHANCE Waterford. Ireland’s oldest city. Tracing its origins as a Viking trading outpost to the first half of the ninth century, from where the city’s trading links were first formed. The city’s past bears the indelible mark of commerce, of cultural diversity and integration. Over the centuries the tentacles of these Viking trading routes were extended and exploited by Norman adventurers, Huguenot craftsmen, Quaker entrepreneurs, Protestant financiers and Irish commercial traders. Waterford was, by the late eighteenth century. a cultural melting pot; its trading routes stretched from the Americas to the Baltic and from the Mediterranean to the Black Sea. Glassmaking in Waterford is emblematic of that diverse cultural assimilation. However, history is also a matter of chance. It is the ability or failure of individuals to seize the initiative from the opportunities that present themselves as a result of human endeavour. More than any other Irish industry, the Waterford glass industry has been the beneficiary of this subtle architecture of chance. When the Penrose uncle and nephew, George and William, began their glassmaking initiative in the city in 1783, it was facilitated by the Free Trade Act of 1780 which repealed the excise duties on glass in place since 1745. These duties were increased in England and Scotland in order to pay for Britain’s involvement in the American War of Independence. This led many glass factories in England to cease trading and, as a result, many glassmakers were brought to Ireland to continue their craft there. Of these glassmakers, John Hill, whom the Penroses brought to Waterford, was the most renowned. His pedigree linked him to the beginnings of glassmaking in England. His mother was a Tyzack, a descendant of the Huguenot family from Lorraine that had fled persecution in France during the early years of the seventeenth century and credited with the development of modern glassmaking in England.8 Hill’s legacy was his glassmaking formulae

PROLOGUE | xii

below :

Waterford City Coat of Arms in crystal. (Fred Curtis)

that would enable Waterford to produce glass of the highest quality.

It was this quality, the skill of its workers and the tenacity of its many owners to protect its good name, that would establish the Waterford brand.

The Penrose glassworks firmly established Waterford as a glass of superior quality. But it was also facilitated by the wealth generated and accumulated as a result of over a century of prosperous trading.

This provided the substantial finance necessary to establish a glassworks. Like those entrepreneurs that came before and afterwards, glassmaking in Waterford was initially a combination of English knowledge and technical know-how, and Irish capital. In Waterford, changing ownership was also a common occurrence.

Following the death of George and William Penrose in 1796 and 1799 respectively, the glassworks changed hands in 1799, 1811, 1823, 1835 and 1848, until it closed in 1851. However, it was during the ownership by George Gatchell (1835–51), that the Waterford brand was firmly established. And it was this reputation, or memory, relayed through the decades, that was instrumental in the revival of the craft in 1947. Again it was foreign know-how, skill and technical knowledge, coupled with a dependence on Irish initiative and Irish capital that was responsible.

STRUCTURE

above : Decanter with bullseye stopper, c.1806. (Bearnes, Hampton & Littlewood)

This book can be easily divided into four parts. The first three chapters deal with the Penrose/Wright/Gatchell ownership from 1783 to 1851. The second part concentrates on the attempts to revive the craft in Waterford from 1852 to 1946, and its revival from 1947 to 1949. The contentious takeover by the McGrath/Griffin consortium in 1950, to their equally controversial sale of their shareholding in 1984, makes up the third segment. The final section, and perhaps the most disputatious, spans three decades, from 1985 to 2009. This section of the book has been the cause of many sleepless nights and has taken ten months to complete. These final two chapters have each been subjected to more than forty re-writes, such was the difficulty in dealing with many of the sensitive issues involved. It may provide uncomfortable reading for some; but I have tried to be as fair and as objective as any historian can be. It took me some time to realise that the many difficult decisions that were taken by individuals and management,

xiii | PROLOGUE

especially between 1987 and 1992, were taken with one overriding motive; to ensure the survival of the company.

That the sacrifices endured during those years and every year thereafter, did not have the desired outcome, is analysed in the final chapter. An Epilogue is included to cover the aftermath of closure in 2009 and to acknowledge the work done by KPS Capital Partners in saving Waterford Crystal and Wedgwood from extinction, and in keeping a manufacturing presence – albeit small – in the city. The Fiskars Corporation purchase is briefly alluded to, with an even briefer overview of that company’s commendable corporate and ethical history. Hopefully, its governance of Waterford and Wedgwood will be a successful and profitable one for all concerned.

This project has been in embryonic form for almost thirty years. A long gestation. It began while researching for my MA thesis where I came across a snippet in a local newspaper mentioning that the Maharajah of Bhutan had purchased a large suite of Waterford glass with unusual instructions. This was the exotic seed that inspired me to eventually embark on this assignment. Although over the next twenty years or so I deviated, writing and publishing on many diverse aspects of history, I always knew that I would write this book because I realised that this was a story that needed to be told, if only to give comfort to the many craftsmen and women who felt betrayed by incompetence and greed. I also want to acknowledge all those craftsmen and women who have passed away over the years, hopefully their families will find some consolation in these pages. There were many difficulties to overcome in tackling this ambitious undertaking. Firstly, many myths, historical and genealogical inaccuracies, had shrouded that history over the years. In this book I have tried to set the record straight, to dispel the myths and to present a comprehensive and coherent history of one of Ireland’s greatest entrepreneurial success stories.

CHANCE II On embarking on this project I also have been the beneficiary of chance or of Lady Luck.

I interviewed Charles Bačik in 1991, a few months before he died. This provided the initial primary source material upon which the rest of my research was based. A fortuitous encounter, through LinkedIn, with John Fitzpatrick in the spring of 2017, in many ways

PROLOGUE | xiv

above : Turning sand and ash into molten glass.

squared the circle for me. John’s generosity in allowing me access to his father’s extensive archive has enabled me to publicly acknowledge, perhaps for the first time, the role his father, Bernard J. Fitzpatrick, played in the revival of Waterford in 1947. It is clear to me that without Bernard Fitzpatrick’s tenacity and vision, Waterford Crystal would not exist today. It would still be gathering new myths upon old ones, making it much more difficult for historians in the future to write an accurate history of the company. I have also been fortunate that a few individuals entrusted me with sensitive documents and information that had not heretofore been in the public realm. This has allowed me a better insight into important episodes of the company’s modern, turbulent history. Indeed, almost all material in this publication is, or has been, in the public domain. If there are faults in my analyses of these facts, they are mine alone.

MEMORY This is the history of a community; a glassmaking community that has its roots embedded in the earliest European ventures in glassmaking. It is a book about people, individuals from diverse backgrounds, countries, religions, that found common cause in producing one of the world’s great iconic brands, and the pride they took in that achievement. As such, it is a cultural and social history that documents the cultural diversity and social integration that has been emblematic of Waterford’s long and proud history, and never as vividly encountered as within Waterford Crystal. This, therefore, is a tribute to some of the finest craftsmen and women that this country has ever seen. It documents how the myths of the past were, by skill, dedication, vision and hard work, transformed into reality. It shows how basic ingredients, sand and ash, were transformed into solid functional form, into objects of beauty. Turning craft into the highest form of art. This is a story about memory and its preservation. Lest we forget.

What might have been and what has been Point to one end, which is always present.

–T.S. Eliot, ‘Burnt Norton’ 9 John M. Hearne, September 2018

Author’s Note In 1981, Waterford Glass was converted into a holding company, Waterford Glass Group Limited. Thereafter, Waterford Crystal became a separate company within the group.

Whereas Waterford glass and Waterford crystal were interchangeable names to describe the product since 1950, from 1982 the product was generally described as Waterford crystal.

xv | PROLOGUE

CHAPTER 6

e

Branding the Future 1960–1984

The meteoric rise in the fortunes and the proliferation of the Waterford brand continued and was consolidated during the 1960s.

The company went public in 1966 and thereafter embarked on a frenetic series of lateral, vertical and unrelated acquisitions. Up until the first oil crisis in 1973 demand for the product outstripped supply. By the time of the second oil crisis in 1979 the resultant worldwide economic depression, especially in America, had created a more hostile trading environment for luxury goods. While Waterford was not immune to this new situation, brand image and reputation helped it negotiate the recessionary years with remarkable tenacity. However, by the end of the 1970s, with costs of production increasing faster than inflation and a failure to invest in new technologies, it quickly began to lose competitiveness. It had also failed to take account of consumers’ changing tastes. opposite :

James Hoban Vase 1963, Architect of the White House. (John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum)

As a result, the 1980s would present greater challenges and even more difficult decisions for management and workers alike, especially as its parent company, the McGrath-controlled Avenue Investments, was itself encountering serious financial difficulties.

BRANDING THE FUTURE 1960–1984 | 149

The tragic and untimely death of managing director Noel Griffin in 1981 would only accentuate an already difficult situation and ultimately lead to control being sold to an English investment company, Globe Investment Trust. k TWO DECADES OF EXPANSION k The 1960s, in particular, were very rewarding in terms of sales, profitability and brand image for Waterford Glass. In the year ending June 1964, it made a pre-tax profit of £158,645; the following year £187,427 and in 1965/66 its profit was £230,233.1 The company was now outperforming its parent IGB, and it was no surprise when, in April 1966, Irish Glass Bottle Ltd announced that its subsidiary Waterford Glass Ltd was to be separated from its parent and given a separate stock exchange listing. 2 This was approved at an EGM in October of that year.3 The announcement came only weeks after its chairman, Joseph McGrath had died. Joe McGrath was a very controversial figure. A former Minister for Industry and Commerce in the Cumann na nGaedheal government, he resigned following the Army Mutiny in 1924. He was not unemployed for too long. When work on the Shannon Electrification Scheme began in August 1925, a strike quickly ensued over the low wages being paid. On 30 September, McGrath was appointed as Director of Labour by the German contractors, Siemens-Schuckert. His appointment was highly contentious. A former Minister for Industry and Commerce, he had also been an organiser for Jim Larkin’s Workers Union of Ireland in Dublin.

Moreover, he had also been head of the Irish Secret Service and was therefore in a position to provide the company with useful information. Negotiations to end the strike quickly broke down and resulted in McGrath hiring non-union labour at fifty shillings a week compared to the thirty-two shillings for the striking workers.

Gradually McGrath wore down the striking workers and by Christmas the dispute was over.4 McGrath never looked back. His involvement with the Hospitals’ Sweepstakes from the 1930s onwards made him a very wealthy man. Randolph Churchill once described McGrath as the richest self-made man in Southern

150 | WATERFORD CRYSTAL

Ireland and, after de Valera, the second most powerful man in Southern Ireland.5 Both de Valera and Ernest Blythe wrote fulsome obituaries in the national print media following his death. Nonetheless, he had used his immense wealth – wealth that had dubious origins – to turn Fitzpatrick’s and Bačik’s dream into a reality, one that even they could hardly have envisaged some short years before.

Then again, reality is not a stable commodity. His death created an environment that allowed his son, Patrick to further his own business ambitions. Patrick or Paddy, as he was affectionately known, now succeeded his father as Chairman of Waterford Glass and a new board of directors was formed which saw Con Dooley and Charles Bačik being appointed in June 1966 and, following his resignation as Taoiseach in November 1966, Seán Lemass was appointed to the board in the following month.6

above :

Patrick McGrath.

The news of Waterford’s imminent stock exchange listing in 1966 was welcomed in financial circles with the Sunday Times recommending the Waterford shares as a ‘buy’ adding that ‘old Waterford was often handled as fondly as Ming or Meissen’.7 The public listing allowed Waterford to raise investment funds which were now necessary if it was to expand. £300,000 was raised following the initial floating and a further £600,000 following a rights issue three years later.8 Thereafter, Waterford underwent major organic and inorganic expansion as part of a diversification strategy that, although impressive, seemed to lack clear strategic focus. From early in the 1960s it had begun to prepare the ground for its expansionary policy. In 1958, Waterford had broken away from its New York distribution agents in the USA and, three years later, set up Waterford Crystal Inc., in New Jersey. In 1964, a distribution company was established in Britain, Waterford Crystal UK.9 At this time plans were already afoot to relocate production from its city-centre Johnstown factory to a state-of-the-art new building on a green-field site on the then outskirts of the city at Kilbarry. Construction began in 1965 and as various stages were completed, workers were transferred from the Johnstown factory.

BRANDING THE FUTURE 1960–1984 | 151

TABLE 6.1 Waterford Glass Pre-Tax Profits, 1960–1969 £ 1960

86,000

1961

116,000

1962

135,000

1963

158,645

1964

187,427

1965

230,233

1966

443,723

1967

574,249

1968

915,399*

1969

910,898

Source: Waterford Glass Ltd. Report and Accounts 1961–70. *In 1967 the company changed its financial year from July/June to January/December. Thus, the 1968 statistics are for the eighteen months July 1967–December 1968.

k DUNGARVAN k It was clear, however that even as the £1 million contract was being signed for the fourth phase of the Kilbarry plant in November 1970, extra capacity would be needed to supply the growing international markets. In April 1970, it was announced that the company would establish a new production plant in Dungarvan, County Waterford. The reasons why Dungarvan was chosen are as interesting as was its corporate structure. Both Noel Griffin and Paddy McGrath, in lengthy interviews, explained that the location had been influenced by its proximity to An Rinn Gaeltacht area.

Both felt ‘that in promoting such development the problems of emigration and rural development will to some measure have been overcome’.10 It was also hoped that the community as a whole would benefit and that it would help in the preservation of the Irish language. When the Dungarvan factory was officially opened by An

152 | WATERFORD CRYSTAL

Taoiseach, Jack Lynch in July 1972, initial employment was 250, but with expectations that it would eventually employ 500.11 However, unusually, the new factory was registered in two different company names: Dungarvan Glass and Dungarvan Crystal.12 While media speculation was that one registration name would be decided upon once the factory neared completion (as will become clear in a later chapter), there was an ulterior motive behind the ambiguity.

By 1972, when the Kilbarry factory was finally completed, an almost seamless relocation had taken place. The total cost, which included a new office building, new showrooms and a social centre with heated swimming pool, was £5 million.13 The total investment, including Dungarvan, was between £6 and £7 million.14 At the opening ceremony of the Social & Sports Centre in 1972, Paddy McGrath stated that the centre was provided not only for those working in Waterford Glass, but that it should be socially and culturally of value to the whole community.15 This was at a time when the company was flush with cash – its cash flow was averaging £500,000 per annum for the previous decade – and it had net assets of over £3 million and all its permanent employees had recently become shareholders.16 k EEC MEMBERSHIP k

above : Crystal basket presented by Josef Cretzan to Jacqueline Kennedy 1967.

(David Cretzan)

By 1970, Ireland’s membership of the European Economic Community (EEC) was looming. The implications of free trade and of international competition were recognised by the business community as a threat to the viability of indigenous Irish companies. In particular, small firms that had been unused to competition would be vulnerable and might face closure. It was in this context that four of the leading Irish companies entered into negotiations to merge.

BRANDING THE FUTURE 1960–1984 | 153

TABLE 6.2 Proposed Merger of Ireland’s Four Leading Industrial Companies Capitalisation

Capital Employed

Net Profit

£m

£m

£’000

Waterford Glass

18.8

3.3

652

Irish Glass Bottle

5.5

2.8

259

P.J. Carroll

8.

9.9

775

6.9

443

22.9

2.129m

Company

United Distillers Ireland 6.9 39.5

Source: Irish Times, 30 April 1970. This merger was also mentioned in the Waterford Glass Group Limited. Report and Accounts 1970 and 1971.

Financial analysts valued this merger of Waterford Glass, Irish Glass Bottle Company, P.J. Carroll and United Distillers Ireland, at £40 million. This would have been the biggest merger in Irish industrial history with the formation of a £40 million export orientated group; its main purpose being to provide a marketing platform capable of meeting the strongest challenge to the exposure to free trade that EEC membership would bring. While each company would retain its own separate trading identity, they would combine their financial and human resources so as to strengthen their ability to compete in export markets throughout the world.17 However, by the end of 1970 when the logistics of such a merger became clearer, the proposal was, after much forensic analysis, shelved by mutual consent. As Waterford was not too dependent on the European market, with 80 per cent of its products being sold on the North American continent, it possibly saw no advantage in the formation of such a merger and, thereafter, Waterford embarked on its own frenetic acquisitions trail throughout the 1970s. k ACQUISITIONS k In 1970, Waterford began an intense series of high-profile acquisitions. It completed the purchase of John Aynsley and Sons, the well regarded British ceramics manufacturer in that year. This

154 | WATERFORD CRYSTAL

above : Two-piece Waterford bowl presented to President Lyndon B. Johnson, St Patrick’s Day, 1967. (Lyndon Baines Johnson Presidential Library and Museum)

had been a very profitable firm and attracted interest and bids from Spode and Denbyware.

Waterford, in a late bid, eventually beat off a challenge from W.T Copland and Sons and acquired the company for £1million – twothirds of the purchase price was cash – and almost immediately changed its name to Aynsley China Ltd. In the same year, it acquired 60 per cent of the Switzer Group.18 The Canadian distributor, William Smith and Sons, was also acquired outright in January 1972 for £200,000 cash.19 In the same year it acquired an 82 per cent controlling interest in the high quality postcard manufacturer, John Hinde Ltd; completing 100 per cent ownership in 1976.20 In 1973, following Ireland’s accession to the EEC, Waterford Glass established an administrative office in Brussels and, in the same year, entered into a joint venture with the Connecticut-based engineering firm, Norco. The following year it acquired the Smith Group which held the Renault franchise in Ireland. In 1977, it acquired a 60 per cent share in the UK distributors, Wuidart Limited, completing the acquisition of the remaining 40 per cent in 1982. Also in 1977, Waterford bought a 25 per cent share in Memory Computers.

Memory had been established in 1975 by Pearse Mee and Aidan McKenna with financial investment support from the McGrath controlled Avenue Investments. At that stage Avenue held 51 per cent of Memory shares while the founders held 49 per cent. Now with Waterford’s 25 per cent, Avenue’s interest was reduced to 42 per cent and McGee and McKenna’s share to 33 per cent.21 With the rapid expansion of the company and its products being sold on four continents, the first modern computer network was installed in the Kilbarry factory to ensure efficient communication between the various branches of the company. In 1971, an IBM System Model 10 replaced the old card-based system that had been installed in 1968.22

BRANDING THE FUTURE 1960–1984 | 155

k FROM SODA TO CRYSTAL k By 1970, the company was in the process of transferring manufacturing from its city-centre location at Johnstown to its new Kilbarry site. As a result, with the furnaces in the new Kilbarry factory ready to produce crystal, the company ceased making soda glass in the same year. All the soda glass that remained in the Johnstown plant was decorated with gold-banding, transfers or both. These pieces of soda glass consisted of Irish Coffee glasses, sugar and cream sets, liqueurs and glasses used in the bar and restaurant trade for Carling Black Label, Harp Lager as well as Guinness tankards of various sizes. Fourteen-ounce Pilsner glasses for Carlsberg were also produced in the Johnstown factory and were decorated with the Carlsberg name and a hop leaf. The Irish Coffee glasses were gold-banded and the words ‘Irish Coffee’ appeared on the bowl of the glass and a shamrock transfer

156 | WATERFORD CRYSTAL

below :

Period Piece.

Reproduction of a c.1830 bowl. (The author.

Photographer Noel Browne)

below :

Presentation of a Waterford oval bowl filled with shamrock to President John F. Kennedy, by Irish Ambassador to the USA Thomas J. Kiernan, 17 March 1961. (John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum)

appeared on the stem. These were produced in large quantities for Smiths of Canada who then distributed them throughout Canada and the United States.

Whiskey glasses were also decorated in similar fashion with Powers and Jameson being particularly large buyers. Clery’s Department store in Dublin was also a significant buyer of gold-banded and decorated soda glass. McDowell’s Jewellers, better known as The Happy Ring House, was a significant buyer of the more traditional crystal. When the production of soda glass was discontinued in 1970, all remaining stock was gold banded, decorated and sold.

Two years later the Decorating Department in Johnstown was closed and gold-banding terminated.23 It would be another twenty years before gold-banding was revived and it would play a critical role in the revival of the company’s fortunes following the long and bitter strike of 1990.

BRANDING THE FUTURE 1960–1984 | 157

k ST PATRICK’S DAY PRESENTATIONS k The tradition of presenting the current President of the United States with a crystal bowl filled with shamrock continued in the 1960s. The first recipient during this decade was President John F. Kennedy. The presentations in 1963 and 1964 were thematic, symbolising the contribution of Irish emigrants to American society. The 1963 gift was a twelve-inch vase and had an engraving of James Hoban, born in Callan, County Kilkenny, and architect of the White House.24 In 1964, The Irish ambassador to the US, Thomas J. Kiernan presented First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy with another crystal vase, this time it came with an engraving of Commodore John Barry, ‘Father of the American Navy’. An engraving of the White House was etched beneath the bust of Barry and a ship adorned the opposite side of the vase.25 The most impressive presentation to Kennedy was the eighteen-inch highfooted centre bowl commissioned by the New Ross Harbour Commissioners to commemorate his visit to New Ross in June 1963 during his presidential visit to Ireland. The bowl contained four panels, each hand-engraved with a different motif. One depicted the old Kennedy homestead at Dunganstown, County Wexford; the second replicated the type of sailing ship on which his great-grandfather would have emigrated from Ireland to the United Stated; the third was an engraved image of the White House and the last panel had the New Ross coat of arms and a presentation inscription.26 k JOSEF CRETZAN: MASTER OF MASTERS k The connection between the Kennedy family and Waterford Glass took on a more personal hue following the president’s death. In 1967, the former First Lady, Jacqueline Kennedy, spent a summer’s vacation in Woodstown, County Waterford with her two children.

Whilst there she visited the Waterford Glass factory in Johnstown in the city centre. On a special tour of the factory she was brought to the blowing department to watch the master glass-blower Joseph Cretzan at work. She had coincidentally met Cretzan, who was

158 | WATERFORD CRYSTAL

above : James Barry Vase, 1964, Father of the American Navy. (John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum)

right : Unique lidded vase presented by New Ross Harbour Commissioners to President John F. Kennedy, 1963. (John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum) Library and Museum)

BRANDING THE FUTURE 1960–1984 | 159

left :

Vase commemorating 50th Anniversary of Irish Independence presented to President Lyndon B. Johnson, St Patrick’s Day 1966.(Lyndon Baines Johnson Presidential Library and Museum)

160 | WATERFORD CRYSTAL

right : Vase with an engraving of Thomas Francis Meagher commemorating the centenary of his death, presented to President Lyndon B. Johnson, St Patrick’s Day 1967.

BRANDING THE FUTURE 1960–1984 | 161

fishing, while out walking on Woodstown beach with her children two days earlier. Acknowledged by his peers as the ‘master of masters’, Cretzan had a very interesting past. Born in Pûtna, Romania in 1924, he was apprenticed at a very young age – perhaps seven or eight – in the Pûtna glassworks where his father and brother also worked. It was here he learned his craft before emigrating to Germany in the late 1930s. Here, because of his skill, he was much sought after by many of the Bavarian glass factories.

In 1939 he took out German citizenship and, as a result, was conscripted into the German Army in 1941 at just seventeen years of age. He was assigned to the panzer division of the German Wehrmacht. Here Cretzan was involved in almost all of the major tank battles of World War Two. He was at Leningrad where he was just one of thirteen soldiers to survive from a regiment of 500. He was with Rommel in North Africa and retreated through Italy where, in January 1944, he saw action at Monte Cassino as part of the 15th Grenadier Panzer division under Major General Eberhard Rodt. Having survived that confrontation, he was later involved in the Ardennes Offensive – the Battle of the Bulge – December 1944 – January 1945. Following the German surrender he was imprisoned in a French prisoner-of-war camp and released in November 1945. After the war Cretzan resumed his glassmaking and when, in 1950, he read an advertisement in a local newspaper looking for glass-blowers and glass-cutters in Waterford, he decided to apply. However, he thought he was going to Iceland not Ireland!

He arrived in Waterford in December 1951.

He was thirty-six years old. His meeting with Jacqueline Kennedy led to him instinctively making two coloured crystal fish for the children and a crystal basket for their mother.

On her return to America, Mrs Kennedy wrote to him thanking him for the glass and wished him well. Joe Cretzan retired in 1987.

162 | WATERFORD CRYSTAL

below :

Josef Cretzan, 1961.

(National Geographic Creative. Photographer: Robert F. Sissins)

However, his retirement was short-lived; he died suddenly in 1990.27 This Irish-America theme was continued in 1967 with the presentation to President Lyndon B. Johnson of another twelve-inch vase with an engraving of Thomas Francis Meagher. Born in Waterford City in 1823, Meagher was the first general of the Irish Brigade during the American Civil War. He fought in many of the most brutal battles of that conflict on the Union side, became the de facto first Governor of Montana where he died in mysterious circumstances in 1867. Johnson received many gifts of Waterford crystal during his term of office and was always generous in his admiration of these. President Nixon was also a recipient of the St Patrick’s Day gift and both his wife and daughter also received Waterford crystal gifts from Irish ambassadors and visiting Irish dignitaries.

One of the most important and impressive presentations made to an American president came in 1977 when on St Patrick’s Day, An Taoiseach Liam Cosgrave presented a crystal vase, designed by Miroslav Havel, to President Ford to mark the bi-centenary of the declaration of American independence. These symbolic presentations continued into the Carter and Reagan presidencies immersing the name Waterford indelibly into the consciousness of the American public.

In many ways this was akin to the eighteenth- and nineteenthcentury practice of fostering an affinity with the product by presenting pieces of crystal to members of royalty and prominent public figures. In this way brand recognition was strengthened and consolidated. above : Letter from Jacqueline Kennedy to Josef Cretzan. (David Cretzan)

Waterford had also been innovative in other visionary ways in promoting its crystal. It was one of the first Irish companies to

BRANDING THE FUTURE 1960–1984 | 163

above : Presentation of a Waterford globe to President Gerald Ford, 1975.

(Waterford City Archives) left :

Two Waterford Crystal Globes. (Waterford City Archives)

164 | WATERFORD CRYSTAL

above : Presentation by Taoiseach Liam Cosgrave on St Patrick’s Day 1976 to President Gerald R. Ford of a Bi-Centennial Vase to mark the 200th anniversary of the American Declaration of Independence. (Gerald R. Ford Presidential Library and Museum)

initiate product placement in films. Waterford glass was prominent in Of Human Bondage (1964) and in the 1966 film, The Blue Max. In 1975, the Louis Marcus short documentary, Conquest of Light, illustrated how the Waterford craftsmen turned liquid glass into bowls, goblets and vases, then cut and etched with great deftness and precision, creating shapes designed to capture the iridescence of light, was nominated for an Academy Award in the Best Live Action Short Film section. Prior to this nomination, the film had been highly successful internationally, winning many prestigious awards. It won the Gold Camera Award for best public relations film by a commercial corporation. It also took the premier award at the US Industrial Film Awards in Chicago and bronze at the British Film Festival in Brighton.28 This film, which was issued in at least six languages, helped the Waterford brand reach consumers that traditional marketing would find difficult to attract.

BRANDING THE FUTURE 1960–1984 | 165

166 | WATERFORD CRYSTAL

k CHANDELIERS k

opposite :

Bi-Centennial vase presented to President Gerald Ford in 1976.

(Waterford City Archives)

From its origins in the eighteenth century, Waterford was renowned for its exquisite chandeliers. This craft was revived during the 1950s

by Waterford’s chief designer, Miroslav Havel, who, having studied examples of old Penrose chandeliers, believed that chandeliers could be an economically viable business opportunity for the revived industry. The first chandelier created was commissioned by ‘Prince’ Michael Romanoff for his famous Romanoff Restaurant on Rodeo Drive, Beverly Hills, California in 1953. 29 It was nothing like an old Penrose chandelier or like anything ever again produced. It was a replica of an imperial Russian Romanoff chandelier six feet in length and six feet wide. But it had no lights! In 1956, the company installed its first chandelier in Ireland in over onehundred years in the lobby or Rotunda of the Ambassador Cinema in Dublin. It would become the first of many that would become a speciality of Havel and of Waterford over the following decades.

Later in that decade, following the refurbishment of the State Drawing Room in Dublin Castle, Waterford chandeliers were installed. In 1960, following similar refurbishment of the Lafayette Dining Room in the National Museum of Ireland, specially designed chandeliers were commissioned and installed. Some of Waterford’s most prestigious chandeliers were commissioned during the 1960s. One of the most important was commissioned by the Irish state and presented as a gift from the Irish people. This magnificent chandelier, which now adorns the President’s Lounge of the John F. Kennedy Centre for Performing Arts in Washington DC, was designed by Miroslav Havel who supervised its installation in 1971. Spanning three metres in diameter and weighing a little over 500 kilos, it was supported by three massive metal rims from which over 4,000 pieces of crystal are suspended and is lighted with 116 bulbs.30 It was the largest chandelier ever made by Waterford at the time. In 1965, to mark the 900th anniversary of the foundation of Westminster Abbey in London, the company received one of its most prestigious commissions for chandeliers from the Guinness family. Designed by Miroslav Havel, and blown by Josef Cretzan, it was one of Waterford’s most alluring and aesthetically beautiful

BRANDING THE FUTURE 1960–1984 | 167

168 | WATERFORD CRYSTAL