Arthur Churchill Ltd. (London, England)

Dates

• Existence: Approximately 1936 (date of establishment) - 1972 (date of dissolution) - 1972

Biography

Arthur Churchill Ltd. was the successor to Arthur Churchill’s antiques business, which was founded around 1912. Churchill specialized in the buying and selling of old English and Irish glass, as well as early drinking glasses. W. G. T. Burne worked for Arthur Churchill and was announced as the successor to Churchill upon Churchill’s death in 1936. However, just weeks thereafter, clients were informed that Burne was no longer working under Churchill’s name.

Arthur Churchill Ltd. was initially managed by Churchill’s widow, Vernita E. Churchill, Edward Barrington Haynes, and A. P. Godfrey. The firm published A Catalogue of Old English and other Glassware and A Coronation Exhibition of Royal, Historical, Political, and Social Glasses, Commemorating Eighteenth and Nineteenth Century Events in English History, in 1937.

Vernita E. Churchill left her management role in 1941, and Haynes and Godfrey ran the firm until 1957. Their business flourished and expanded, and they launched Glass Notes, a periodical for glass collectors, in 1943. They also sold photographs of “unusual or especially interesting” glass objects they encountered in their business dealings.

H. J. Dixon replaced Edward Barrington Haynes in 1957, and in 1958, D. A. Crompton joined the Arthur Churchill Ltd. management team. Around this time, the firm’s last catalog and last issue of Glass Notes were published. In 1962, ownership of the firm appears to have been transferred to the Crompton family. Both Dixon and Godfrey left the firm, and Sidney C. Crompton joined as a manager. In 1967, Sidney C. Crompton, and glass collector Jerome Strauss were implicated in the illegal export of the Wenyfrid Geares Verzelini Goblet. While both parties were ultimately cleared of wrongdoing, the affair most likely damaged the reputation of Arthur Churchill Ltd.

Arthur Churchill Ltd. was dissolved on December 7th, 1972.

Bibliography

Hildyard, Robin. "Glass Collecting in Britain: The Taste for the Earliest English Lead Glass." The Burlington Magazine 136, no. 1094 (1994): 303-07. Accessed June 16, 2021. http://www.jstor.org/stable/885912.



Jerome Strauss Papers, 1903-1978. MS 0147. The Rakow Research Library. The Corning Museum of Glass. Corning, New York.

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