The development of James Powell & Sons' coloured pot-metal glass, 1845-1860: with biographical notes on those involved with the manufacture of Charles Winston's Glass.

This article focuses on the development of James Powell & Sons’ coloured pot-metal glass between 1845 and 1860, particularly the experimental production of “Winston’s Glass” beginning in 1849, and provides biographical notes on key figures involved in its manufacture. The lifting of glassmaking restrictions in 1845 enabled Powell’s to produce coloured pot-metal glass, which was used in stained glass windows designed by artists such as George Caleb Hedgeland. Charles Winston, a lawyer and stained glass authority with family ties to the Caribbean slave economy, played a central role in commissioning and promoting this glass, collaborating with chemists and glassmakers including John Henry Pepper, Edward Green, Dr. Henry Medlock, and Charles Harwood Clarke. Although Winston’s Glass was commercially available until 1862, it was eventually superseded by thinner pot-metal glasses developed by others, and its original recipes were lost. The article also contextualizes Winston’s Glass within broader 19th-century stained glass innovations and the social networks of those involved.