William Burrell, Thomas & Drake and the Transatlantic Trade in Stained Glass, 1900-1950

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Comprising over 700 pieces, the medieval stained glass collection of industrialist and connoisseur Sir William Burrell (1861-1958) is the third largest museum collection of its kind in the world. Formed largely in the years 1900-1950 as part of a much more extensive collection donated to the city of Glasgow in 1944, the stained glass at the heart of the Burrell collection is of exceptional quality and world-wide significance. Assisted by Glasgow-based collector and dealer Grosvenor Thomas (1856-1923), Burrell was able to acquire treasures from some of Europe's most important sites and monuments, including Abbot Suger's St Denis, St Peter Mancroft in Norwich, and the churches of Rouen. Thomas was at the same time supplying glass to major US collectors, including George D. Pratt, Edsel Ford and the Metropolitan Museum. The third figure in this extraordinary relationship was glazier and stained glass restorer Wilfred Drake (1879-1948), through whose hands most of the Burrell Collection passed. Thomas and Drake formed a business partnership that was continued after Thomas's death by his son, Roy Grosvenor Thomas. Based in New York, Roy Grosvenor Thomas turned the business into a truly transatlantic trade, with Drake acting as British anchorman. The triumvirate continued to collect throughout the Second World War and the acquisition in 1939 of stained glass from Boppard in Germany from the collection of the bankrupt William Randolph Hearst made Burrell's collection 'the finest private collection in existence'. The finest jewels in Burrell's stained glass crown have been on public display since the opening of the new Burrell Collection building in 1983. Despite the scholarly interest focussed on the collection at this time (notably Marks 1985), no complete and in depth survey of the collection has yet been attempted. The Museum's initiation of a new inventory project and comprehensive condition survey now provides an opportunity to address this lacuna and to open up the collection for public access and enjoyment as never before.Through the exploration of the relationship between Burrell and his agents, drawing on Burrell's purchase books, the Museum's extensive archive of correspondence between Burrell, Thomas and Drake, together with the newly accessible stock books of Thomas & Drake, recently purchased by the Worshipful Company of Glaziers, this project will explore the origins of the collection and its relationship with the collecting activity of other great collectors, connoisseurs, dealers and Museum curators. It will reveal in detail the connections between the panels in the Burrell collection and related pieces in other museums (notably the Metropolitan Museum in New York and the Victoria & Albert in London). For the first time the role of the restorer in the formation of the great museum collections of the world will be examined. The project will shed new light on this world-ranking collection, enhancing the enjoyment and understanding of museum visitors, while at the same time contributing to the process of exploring 'digital repatriation' of the collection. Works cited or refered to in the preparation of this application:Cannon, Linda, Stained Glass in the Burrell Collection (Edinburgh, 1991)Hayward, Jane, Shepard, Mary and Clark, Cynthia, English and French Medieval Stained Glass in the Collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art (London & Turnhout, 2003), 2 vols.Journal of the British Society of Master Glass Painters 1:1 (1924), 29-31, Obituary of Grosvenor ThomasMarks, Richard, Burrell: Portrait of a Collector (Glasgow 1985, rev 1988)Wells, William, Stained and Painted Glass [in the] Burrell Collection (Glasgow, 1962)Stained and Painted Heraldic Glass [in the] Burrell Collection (Glasgow, 1962)