Emanuel Hauptmann
The Father of Japanese Cut Glass
Sally Haden

Abstract
On a spring day in 1881 a young Bohemian glass engraver stepped ashore in Japan, no
doubt grateful to put his feet on land after six long weeks at sea sailing from Britain.
Emanuel Hauptmann, skilled in both glass engraving and cutting, was to stay in the
country little more than a year, but in that short time gave instruction which laid thefoundation for today’s Japanese cut-glass industry. He was one of a small team ofBritish glassmakers who had been invited by the Meiji government of Japan to help
with its modernisation programme, advising, assisting and teaching in Tokyo at a
glassworks specially created to bring modern western-style glassmaking to the nation.
Today, nearly one hundred and forty years later, Emanuel Hauptmann is thought of bysome as the ‘father’ of cut glass in Japan, even though Japanese copies of British, Irish
and European glass decoration had been available since earlier in the century. This is hisstory, and the story of the origins of Japanese cut glass.

KEYWORDS Japan, kiriko, glass cutting, Bohemian glass engraver, Shinagawa
glassworks, Emanuel Hauptmann

Emanuel Hauptmann
The Father of Japanese Cut Glass
Sally Haden
On a spring day in 1881 a young Bohemian glass engraver stepped ashore in Japan, no doubt grateful to put
his feet on land after six long weeks at sea sailing from Britain. Emanuel Hauptmann,1 skilled in both glass
engraving and cutting, was to stay in the country little more than a year, but in that short time gave instruction
which laid the foundation for today’s Japanese cut-glass industry. He was one of a small team of British
glassmakers who had been invited by the Meiji government of Japan to help with its modernisation
programme, advising, assisting and teaching in Tokyo at a glassworks specially created to bring modern
western-style glassmaking to the nation. Today, nearly one hundred and forty years later, Emanuel Hauptmann
is thought of by some as the ‘father’ of cut glass in Japan. This is his story, and the story of the origins ofJapanese cut glass.
It is possible that Emanuel’s first view of the factory where he had come to work was from the train as hetravelled up from Yokohama, disembarking at Shinagawa just before Tokyo. Although the buildings would nothave surprised him because he had grown up surrounded by glassmaking, the factory would have been an
impressive sight from the carriage. It was situated proudly beside Japan’s first railway line, only recently
opened, and it had grown rapidly since being founded in 1873 with just one furnace.
Begun as a private Japanese window glass factory, then nationalised in 1876, the Shinagawa glassworks
had been home to three British glassmakers already. Like Emanuel, each had been invited on a time-limited
contract to give instruction to Japanese glassmakers and,after 1876, to advise on the expansion of the facility for
all types of modern, western-style glassmaking. By 1881
the factory was training Japanese workers in the
manufacture of glass for domestic, scientific, industrial
and transportation uses, and attempting to make thecountry’s first window glass. Its purpose was nothing
short of bringing the Japanese glass industry to birth.

A revolution in glass
The country’s desire to modernise had been triggered by
the forced opening of its doors in the 1850s after over
two hundred years of self-imposed isolation from theoutside world. The cultural, technological and economic
revolutions that had taken place in the West during that
period had almost completely passed Japan by, althoughsome knowledge of the advances had trickled in throughstrictly limited trade with outsiders, particularly the
Dutch, using the tiny port of Dejima at Nagasaki. Luxury
European goods were imported during the Edo period(1603-1868), including various types of fine glassware
which became known as giyaman. This Japanese term
was derived from the Dutch word for diamond, diamant,
probably because of the prominence of Dutch glass
Emanuel Hauptmann The Father of Japanese Cut Glass1

Fig.1 : Emanuel Hauptmann (1848-1924) in his glass
engraving workshop in England, circa 1904. Courtesy of the
Hauptmann family.

© 2021 HORIGUCHI KIRIKO

engraving in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
Items of Dutch engraved glass entering Japan in theearly Edo period would have been made using diamondtipped tools that were hand-held.2
Later imports included cut glass, produced by holding
the glass to large revolving wheels, and glass that was
engraved by means of small revolving copper wheels.
Giyaman of all types was much sought after by wealthypeople, treasured in specially crafted boxes and passed
down through generations.

Fig.2 : The Shinagawa glassworks beside Japan’s first railway
line, c.1881. Photograph album ‘Collection of JapaneseViews’. Courtesy of Ms Beniko Ozawa.

In Japan glass had traditionally been thought of as toodelicate and precious a material to be used for general
purposes, so its manufacture had been limited to small
workshops scattered across the country. Althoughimitation of western glass began early in the Edo period,
there was little interest in glass amongst the general
population; it was neither affordable, practical nor
available in any quantity. But it was a different matter
when western countries began to enter Japan, displaying
their power and industrial advances. Steam engines, thetelegraph, banking systems and other marvels quickly
convinced the Japanese to set about modernisation andtransform many of their old crafts into western-styleindustries. Japanese glass underwent a revolution.

Turning to the West
Turning to the West for expertise, and Britain in particular,
Japan sought glassmakers to help establish the country’s
first truly western-style, industrial glass factory. The
Shinagawa site was selected, building began, and in 1874
the first of the four British craftsmen arrived. Thomas
Walton (1833-1897) was a manager and instructor at
Shinagawa for four years from 1874 to 1878, Elijah
Skidmore (1836-1886) was there from 1877 to 1881 as a
crucible maker, and James Speed (1834-1908) took up thepost of head craftsman and manager in 1879.3 For almost
four years Speed supported the development of various
types of glass as the factory diversified. Last on the scene
was Emanuel Hauptmann, engaged to teach Japanese
craftsmen what he knew best, western-style glass engraving
and cutting.
By 1881 when Emanuel set his trainees to work at
Shinagawa, the production of Japanese-made cut andengraved glass in the western fashion had already begun.
For most Japanese people, genuine imported giyaman was
too expensive and so glassmakers had been busy making
Emanuel Hauptmann The Father of Japanese Cut Glass

2

Fig. 3 : Edo-kiriko goblet with stem. Transparent, colourlesslead glass. Unknown maker, c.1860-1910. 174 mm height.
Courtesy of Horiguchi Kiriko Inc.

© 2021 HORIGUCHI KIRIKO

copies. However, they seem to have worked entirely by hand, using metal bars in a linear movement to grind
the facets. Western glass historians find this very surprising because of the ubiquitous use of rotating
equipment for glass cutting in the West since at least the eighteenth century, but Japanese research rejects thepossibility of rotating wheels for cutting before the Shinagawa glassworks.4 Distinctive styles had evolved indifferent regions, a leading one being Edo-kiriko, said to have been started in 1834 by Kyubei Kagaya inTokyo, when the city was still known as Edo. Kiriko means ‘facet’; kiriko glass in Japan is cut glass.
But Emanuel’s workshop was the first place in Japan to offer instruction in cutting and wheel-engraving
direct from the West, with equipment and materials that had been imported from there. Moreover, the generalethos at this pioneering glassworks was industrial, with all the requirements of industry: a division of labour,
mass production and a range of products aimed at the general population. This was a factory, not a collectionof individual craft workshops. It was in this way that Emanuel’s instruction at Shinagawa was so important,creating the basis for today’s tableware industry and the specialised craft of kiriko.

Becoming a Bohemian glass decorator
Emanuel Hauptmann was born in 1848 in Strobnitz,5 a village on the forested southern border of Bohemia.
His father was the youngest of three brothers all born in Wolfersdorf, 6 a village typical of the northern
Bohemian forests centred on Steinschönau and Haida.7 Both areas were very important for glassmaking and it
was common for families to supplement their farming income by decorating glass at home for the towns’ glass
factories. It has been estimated that in the late nineteenth century in the northern area, there were over two
thousand establishments for glass decoration, and eight thousand people worked from home.8 Although it is
not known where Emanuel and his uncles, Ignaz Hauptmann (1816-1887) and Franz Hauptmann (1818-1893),
undertook their apprenticeships, they are likely to have entered the Bohemian glass industry in or near theirbirth places.
Bohemian glass from these areas, and nearby European
districts, had been popular across Europe since tradersbegan to carry it far and wide in the mid-seventeenth
century. Its jewel-like qualities, brilliant colours and highly
artistic cutting, engraving, gilding and enamelling made itvery attractive. Large schools for the decoration of glass
sprang up and it was routine at the end of training for a
craftsman to travel abroad as a journeyman before hecould take his place as a master at home. 9 Traders, who
operated within long-established European or international
networks for the export of Bohemian glass, were often
skilled glass decorators and might spend long periods inforeign countries where they would embellish glass on the
spot according to local requirements and fashion.
Sometimes they remained abroad, setting up in business as
both traders and craftsmen, and teaching local people.

The Bohemians in Edinburgh

Fig.4 : Bohemian glass beaker, 1848. Clear glass
overlaid with red. Cut base and copper-wheel
engraved depiction of the Three Fates. Courtesy of
Wikimedia Commons.

Emanuel Hauptmann The Father of Japanese Cut Glass

It was very much in this tradition that in about 1840
Emanuel’s uncle Ignaz Hauptmann left home for
Edinburgh, Scotland, where he settled and formed abusiness, supported subsequently by Franz and otherfamily members. Bohemian glass was about to become acraze in Britain and the Hauptmanns formed a bridge for3© 2021 HORIGUCHI KIRIKO

Emanuel Hauptmann The Father of Japanese Cut Glass

4© 2021 HORIGUCHI KIRIKO

Fig.5 : Glass decorating workshop at Holyrood glassworks, Edinburgh, depicted in 1834, but probably built by 1820. A single steam engine at the far end powered two rotating
shafts, one on each side of the workshop. Each shaft turned twenty cutting lathes. Reproduced with the kind permission of The City of Edinburgh Museums and Galleries, The
Museum of Edinburgh, and a private lender to the Museum of Edinburgh.

dozens of young Bohemian wheel-engravers to enter the country through the port of Leith, near Edinburgh.
They could earn a great deal more in western Europe than back home.10 Several stayed in Edinburgh whileothers moved further afield, to wherever fine glassmaking was already well established, for example Glasgow,
Newcastle-Upon-Tyne, Stourbridge, Dublin or America. London, as a centre for the making and trading of
high-quality craft goods, was its own magnet for Bohemian glass craftsmen who often arrived there directlyfrom their home country. During the eighteenth century and up to mid-nineteenth century, Bohemian glass
traders and decorators could be found in the major cities of every continent.11
The decoration of glass is a cold-working process, carried out on items after they have been formed andannealed at a factory. This made it possible for cutters and engravers to operate away from the site of
manufacture if they chose to do so, either in their own homes or in dedicated businesses. They could buy
blanks,12 decorate and sell them onwards themselves, or act as sub-contractors for factories. Until the
Industrial Revolution, their equipment was inexpensive because it was simple and required little power – alathe mechanism powered by hand, foot or water was enough. But once steam power was applied to cutting
everything changed.

Western-style cutting and engraving
The great potential of steam-power for glass decoration was understood early in the nineteenth century at aleading Scottish glassworks. Even at the outset of steam technology at the end of the eighteenth century, asingle engine could power several glass-cutting lathes simultaneously. Such a system was expensive to install,but in 1818 a forward-thinking glass manufacturer named William Ford leased a steam engine of about fivehorse power ‘for driving machinery for cutting crystal’ in his Edinburgh factory near Holyrood Palace. At thatdate his glassworks had a ‘complete and exclusive cutting and engraving house and apparatus’. 13 His
workshop may have been the one depicted in an
engraving of 1834 (Fig.5), which his nephew John Ford
upgraded in about 1836. It was large and advanced for
its time, allowing up to forty glass cutters to work
together.
By using this system, like other glassworks across
Britain and Ireland, the Holyrood glassworks was able
to turn out extensive quantities of fine, sparkling tableand decorative ware. Regency glass, as it became
known, was very popular and sold well at home andabroad. It was from such British and Irish workshopsthat some Japanese giyaman came.
But where were the engravers at Holyrood
glassworks? Glass in the Bohemian style was a very
important product then, and yet the workshop had a
proportion of only one wheel-engraver to ten cutters(Fig.6). In fact, by the middle of the century, large
glassworks like Holyrood sent most engraving work out
to Bohemians in their own premises, some of whichwere small domestic settings, while others were fullscale businesses. In 1848 Hauptman & Co. wasestablished by Ignaz Hauptmann, becoming asubstantial business which lasted almost forty years,
engraving for Holyrood and other glass manufacturers.
Emanuel Hauptmann The Father of Japanese Cut Glass5

Fig.6 : Detail of glass decorating workshop at Holyrood
glassworks, Edinburgh, depicted in 1834, but probably built by1820. In this workshop the proportion of engravers to cutters
was just one to ten. The engraver is using his foot to power thetreadle mechanism. Reproduced with the kind permission of
The City of Edinburgh Museums and Galleries, The Museum of
Edinburgh, and a private lender to the Museum of Edinburgh.

© 2021 HORIGUCHI KIRIKO

The Hauptmanns were, however, far more than just engravers for factories. Following in the ways of
Bohemian glassmakers back home, they also acquired blanks to decorate and sell on, and were fully equipped
to cut, engrave or paint in whatever style retail shops or individual customers desired. In 1853-54 Ignaz
Hauptmann was listed as ‘glass engraver and glass cutter’ in an Edinburgh directory,14 and in 1881, as well as
an engraving room and a painting workshop, Hauptman & Co. had a cutting room with thirteen units poweredby a large steam engine.15
Amongst the many Bohemian engravers in the West, a few were very artistic and able to depict
magnificent scenery, nature, portraits or classical subjects using their fine copper wheel. They are justifiably
renowned for their work. Their fame has, however, left the impression that all Bohemian glass decorators only
engraved. In fact, in Britain at least, many of them seem to have adapted to circumstances in order to stay inemployment or business, doing not only engraving but whatever form of glass decoration was required. Ignaz
Hauptmann appears to have been skilled in both wheel-engraving and cutting.
This was Emanuel Hauptmann’s background. When he took a ship to Scotland as a young man some timein the 1860s to join his uncles, Bohemian glassmaking methods and culture were second nature to him. He
had grown up in a country known worldwide for its centuries of fine glass manufacturing and trading, its
craftsmen settling abroad and giving instruction locally in whatever skills were required. His first movements
in Scotland are obscure but almost certainly he started out working for his uncles, where he would have seen
cutting, if he did not do it himself. Then in about 1870, he took a job as a wheel-engraver in Glasgow where
he married an English woman and moved south with his young family to settle and work in Newcastle-UponTyne and nearby Gateshead in England.16 By the time he went to Japan in 1881, Emanuel Hauptmann wasfamiliar with both Bohemian and British glassmaking, well-travelled and knowledgeable about various kindsof glass decoration.

At Shinagawa
Although the central purpose of the Shinagawa glassworks remained the same from its foundation in 1873 toits closure under British technological influence ten years later—the introduction of all types of modern
western-style glassmaking into Japan—the emphasis shifted between different products. After starting with
Walton, who set up furnaces and taught window glass making, and with Skidmore, who showed how to makecrucibles for glass melting, Shinagawa glassworks was nationalised in 1876. At that point, the goal became to
make, and instruct in the making of common tableware, bottles, items for domestic, street and transportation
lighting, and glass for the pharmaceutical and chemical industries.17 In addition, the factory was to continue
trying to make window glass, a very difficult technology to introduce outside the West. When James Speed
started his term in 1879, various metallic oxides and equipment for mould-blowing and pressing were
imported from England, and finally attention was turned to glass decoration.
Japanese records show that at some point between 1880 and early 1881, glass decorating materials wereordered from England.18 Although it is not known exactly when these items arrived, kiriko was alreadyestablished in Japan by this date, as described above, and glass cutters had been working at the Shinagawa
factory before Emanuel Hauptmann started. 19 Also, items of cut glass were included in a display of thefactory’s produce at Japan’s Second Industrial Exposition, which opened just before Emanuel’s arrival.
Therefore it is possible that eager kiriko makers pressured the management to provide training and that James
Speed supervised a workshop ahead of Emanuel’s arrival in May 1881.
What might glass decorating in that workshop have looked like between about 1880 and 1883? We canonly speculate, but before delivery of the specialised wheels from England, any cutting that was done may
have been performed in the Japanese way: laborious carving with hand-held iron bars. But once the equipment
arrived, cutting was done by Te-mawashi, meaning by the hand-rotation method.20 This is likely to have been
Emanuel Hauptmann The Father of Japanese Cut Glass

6© 2021 HORIGUCHI KIRIKO

Fig.7 : Glass cutting workshop at Horiguchi Glass Inc., Tokyo, mid-twentieth century, with several lathes driven by one electric motor.
The equipment and layout here is very similar to the original British cutting workshop design of the nineteenth century. Courtesy of
Horiguchi Kiriko Inc.

where someone, perhaps a trainee, powered the lathe by turning a large wheel by hand. The large wheel wasconnected by a belt to a horizontal shaft set in a frame, where the cutting or polishing wheel was mounted
onto the shaft. The glass was incised, ground or polished by being held to the appropriate wheel as it revolved.
Wheel-engraving was probably powered by foot-treadle mechanisms on the two imported engraving lathes.
Steam-powered technology was very new in Japan at the time and probably too expensive for the
Shinagawa glassworks before 1883, 21 but veterans adopted it as soon as it became affordable. By the end of
the century copies of the British steam-powered cutting workshop began to appear in Japan. If in 1894 any
English, Scottish or Irish glass cutter had entered the cutting workshop of Takijiro Iwaki, one of Emanuel’s
trainees, they would have felt quite at home amongst the steam-driven machinery.22 The layout—a series ofdeep wooden troughs and large belt-driven lathes turned by a single rotating shaft—was the standard designfor cutting workshops in both Britain and Japan until the middle of the twentieth century, even after the sourceof power for the central rotating shaft changed from steam to electricity. More than a hundred years separate
the cutting premises at Holyrood in Scotland using steam-power (Fig.5) and Horiguchi Glass in Tokyo using
electricity (Fig.7) but the similarity of layout and cutting equipment demonstrates the importance of British
technological influence on Japanese glass decoration, through the Shinagawa glassworks.
But it was the introduction at Shinagawa of big cutting wheels on a rotating lathe, together with wheelengraving, that was the crucial first step for Japan towards western-style glass decoration. These tools enabled
cutting and engraving trainees to experience much faster, deeper, more efficient and more elaborate ways ofworking, under Emanuel Hauptmann’s instruction. It is not known precisely how many trained at Shinagawa
before the factory closed in 1883, but Yamaguchi (1993) has identified about twenty men who went on fromthere to become Edo-kiriko makers, almost all of them working at least once at Iwaki Glass, a substantial
company founded in 1883 by Shinagawa veteran Takijiro Iwaki.
Emanuel Hauptmann The Father of Japanese Cut Glass

7© 2021 HORIGUCHI KIRIKO

Edo-kiriko today

Fig.8 : Vase of transparent lead glass with purple overlay. Ichio
Horiguchi, 1937. 303mm height. Yarai pattern (bamboo
palisade). Courtesy of Horiguchi Kiriko Inc.

Japanese artisans are very proud of their training
lineage and some of today’s kiriko makers can trace
their instruction from Emanuel Hauptmann in a directline of descent, from master to apprentice. For
example, Tokumatsu Ōhashi (1873-1951) learned from
Emanuel23 and when he became a master cutter, hetrained Kikuichiro Kobayashi. Kobayashi was thefounder of two lines: one through his son Hideo andthe other through another family member, Ichio
Horiguchi. Both the Kobayashi and Horiguchi families
formed companies in Tokyo which continue today:
Kobayashi Glass Kogeisyo was founded in 1917,
Horiguchi Glass in 1921 and Horiguchi Kiriko Inc. in2008. The latter was set up by Toru Horiguchi. In the
Horiguchi lineage, Ichio Horiguchi was Shūseki theFirst, Tomio Suda was Shūseki the Second, and Toru
Horiguchi is known as Shūseki the Third.
Edo-kiriko is very much alive in modern times. It wasclassified as a traditional craft of Tokyo in 1985, thenas a national traditional craft in 2002, and has been
defined as glass made manually, using mostly rotating
tools and produced in a specific area of the suburbs of

Fig.9 : Ichio Horiguchi (1912-1983), apprentice of Kikuichiro
Kobayashi and founder of Horiguchi Glass. Photographed
1960s-70s. Courtesy of Horiguchi Kiriko Inc.

Fig.10 : Transparent, colourless lead glass bowl. Kikuichiro
Kobayashi. 1963. 220mm width x 120mm height. Uroko Mon ( Fishscales pattern ). Courtesy of Horiguchi Kiriko Inc.

Emanuel Hauptmann The Father of Japanese Cut Glass

8© 2021 HORIGUCHI KIRIKO

Fig.11 : Tokusen-sakazuki thirty glass set. Horiguchi Kiriko. 2013. Courtesy of Horiguchi Kiriko Inc.

Tokyo. The Edo-kiriko Cooperative Association website currently lists 52 union members and says there areabout a hundred craftsmen in Tokyo, 24 but kiriko is also made in Kagoshima and elsewhere in Japan.

Conclusion
In October 1882, Emanuel Hauptmann returned home to his family in Gateshead, England, where he worked
as a glass engraver until he died in 1924. The Shinagawa glassworks was closed and put up for sale by thegovernment in 1883, largely because the manufacture of window glass—the only product that would havemade it viable—had not succeeded. It was a challenging technology to transfer; the first successful Japanesewindow glass was not achieved until about 1910, in Osaka. The factory was reopened later as a privatelyowned glassworks, with German technology, but by then all four of the British men were back in England.
Walton had left in 1878, and Speed and Skidmore went from Shinagawa to work elsewhere in Japan for awhile before also returning to Britain.
Japanese records describe the four men as ‘experts’ in the field of glassmaking, but from the British pointof view they were ordinary craftsmen. When they arrived back home, they had to take whatever glass work
was available and accept that their time in the limelight was over. Although within the Japanese glass industry
today they are still remembered and acknowledged, hardly any British ‘experts’ who assisted Japan in its great
modernisation programme were ever acknowledged at home in Britain, and very few were publicly honoured
in Japan. However, the four had earned far more than would have been possible in Britain and undoubtedly
had a fascinating time. No personal accounts of their experience have survived, but perhaps EmanuelHauptmann, at least, was very proud of his work in Japan. As a Bohemian glass engraver, it was a chance forhim to follow in his country’s and his family’s footsteps, transmitting the skills of glass decoration to foreign
places.

Emanuel Hauptmann The Father of Japanese Cut Glass

9© 2021 HORIGUCHI KIRIKO

Fig.12 : Toru Horiguchi (1976 - ). Master of Traditional Crafts (EdoKiriko) and Board Member of Edo Kiriko Cooperative. Toru inherited
his master Tomio Suda’s title and succeeded to the position of‘Shuseki (III)’. Courtesy of Horiguchi Kiriko Inc.

Fig.13 : Sanagi. Vase by Toru Horiguchi, 2011.Soda-lime glass,
120mm width x 162mm height. Courtesy of Horiguchi Kiriko Inc.

September 2021

Emanuel Hauptmann The Father of Japanese Cut Glass

10© 2021 HORIGUCHI KIRIKO

Bibliography
Haden, S., 2013. They went to larn ‘em: British glassmakers help to establish Japan’s first western-styleglassworks, 1874-1883. Society of Glass Technology: European Journal of Glass Science and Technology A,
February 2013, 54 (1), pp.25-30
Haden, S., 2014. They went to larn ‘em: How four British glassmakers played a key part in the modernisationof Japan’s glass industry in the late 19th century. Journal of the Glass Association, Vol.10
Haden, S., 2017. A British Glass Expert at Shinagawa Glass Works: James Speed, my Great Grandfather.
Annual Report of Shinagawa Historical Museum
Hajdamach, Charles R., 1991. British Glass 1800-1914, Antique Collectors Club
Inoue, A., 2003. ‘British Influence on the Shinagawa Glassworks – Japan’s First Industrial Glass Factory.’
Annales of the 16th Congress, AIHV, London
Inoue, A., 1979. Shinagawa Glass Works (in Japanese), GLASS, Vol. 6 and 7, AGASJ (Association Glass Art
Studies Japan)
Irvine, D. and Haden, S., 2019. ‘Emanuel Hauptmann: Itinerant Glass Engraver’, Glass Matters, Journal of
The Glass Society, Vol.4
Kobusho (Ministry of Industry), 1877-1881. Nenpo (Annual Report) 1-6. National Archives, Tokyo
Polak, Ada, 1975. Glass and its makers and its public, Weidenfeld & Nicholson
Sugie, S. 1950. History of the Japanese Glass Industry
Turnbull, J., 2017. From Goblets to Gaslights: The Scottish Glass Industry 1750-2006, Society of Antiquaries
of Scotland, Edinburgh, Scotland
Yamaguchi, Katsuaki, 2009. Edo Kiriko: Sono nagare o sasaeta hito to waza, (in Japanese), Ribun Shuppan
Yoshioka, Ritsuo History of Shinagawa Glass Factory <http://uranglass.gooside.com/shinagawa/sgf.htm>(22March 2021)

Emanuel Hauptmann The Father of Japanese Cut Glass

11© 2021 HORIGUCHI KIRIKO

Acknowledgements
I would like to acknowledge the help and support of several people during the preparation of this article.
First of all, it has been a privilege to work with Emanuel Hauptmann’s descendants, especially Diane Irvine,
his great-great-granddaughter. After gathering together everything the family knew about Emanuel andsharing it with me, Diane greatly expanded our understanding of her ancestor’s life by conducting her own
research.
My thanks go also to Akiko Inoue Osumi, who uncovered the historical significance of the Shinagawa
glassworks for Japanese glassmaking and for Edo-Kiriko. I am indebted to her for my first and, to date, only
photograph of James Speed, my ancestor, who was one of Emanuel Hauptmann’s fellow craftsmen at
Shinagawa.
It has been a pleasure to work with Toru Horiguchi, Edo-Kiriko artisan. He has continually inspired andhelped me since my first visit to Japan in 2016, as has Ritsuo Yoshioka, owner of the Japan Uranium Glass
Collectors Club. Ritsuo’s interest in the subject and his willingness to answer my questions have been
invaluable.
Finally, I am grateful to Jill Turnbull, glass historian, for her insights into Scottish glassmaking and her
kindness to myself and Diane Irvine whenever we visited Edinburgh on research trips.

_________________________________

About the author
Sally Haden is a history writer and private researcher specialising in Victorian and Japanese glassmaking, andthe great-grandaughter of James Speed in this article. Her involvement in glassmaking history began in 2005
when she and her brother Donald Haden began to look into the family’s industrial past. Together they
produced a book (Haden, Donald. A Bumpy Ride: One Hundred and Fifty Years of Haden Manufacturing in
the West Midlands, 2015, Aspect Design, Malvern), while Sally wrote several articles for The Glass Society in
the UK, and collaborated in research and writing with Japanese and other experts for publication in different
countries. More of her work is available at www.WhoMadeThatGlass.com.

Emanuel Hauptmann The Father of Japanese Cut Glass

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1 ‘Emanuel’ and ‘Hauptmann’ can be spelled various ways. Because Emanuel Hauptmann was born in a country where

the prevailing language was German at the time, the Germanic spelling of his name has been used here - one m in
Emanuel and two n’s in Hauptmann. This spelling is confirmed by his Bohemian birth record, and also by the name
‘Hauptmann’ engraved on a piece of glass held by his family.
2 Sugie,1950
3 James Speed was the author’s great-grandfather.
4 This is a matter of some controversy amongst glass historians internationally. For further information: <www.pressglas-korrespondenz.de/aktuelles/pdf/pk-2016-2w-yoshioka-japan-glasindustrie-1890.pdf> (22 March 2021)
5 Now Horní Stropnice, Czech Republic
6 Now Volfartice in the Česká Lípa district, Czech Republic
7 Now Kamenický Šenov and Nový Bor respectively, Czech Republic
8 Polak, 1975, p.193
9 Polak, 1975, p.107
10 Another wheel-engraver from Bohemia, JHB Millar, was also a conduit for the migration of Bohemian artisans.

Hajdamach, 1991, p.159. Although Millar arrived in Edinburgh ten years after Ignaz Hauptmann, by the 1860s his
business was comparable in size to Hauptman & Co.
11 Polak, 1975, p.107
12 ‘Blanks’ were items of glass made by a glassworks that were left blank for decoration to be added.
13 Turnbull, 2017, p.37. This Edinburgh glassworks had various names through its history. Shortly after William Ford’s

death in 1819, it was known as the Mid-Lothian Glass Works, under John Ford in partnership with William Bailey. From1835 when John Ford took sole ownership, until it’s final closure in 1904, it was known generally as Holyrood Flint Glass
Works.
14 Edinburgh and Leith Post Oﬃce Directory, 1853-54, Trade section
15 Bankruptcy papers dated 18.05.1881. National Records of Scotland CS318_25_234_1 p.1C
16 He was a Bohemian national, but became a British Subject by marrying an English woman.
17 For an outline history of the factory: <http://uranglass.gooside.com/shinagawa/sgf.htm> (22 March 2021)
18 Two engraving lathes, various stone and wooden wheels, ‘bristle brush wheels’, ‘cork’, ‘polishing sand for cutting’ and‘noshinku iron’. Kobusho (Ministry of Industry), 1877-1881<www.digital.archives.go.jp/das/image/M0000000000000038551> pp.59-65 (22 March 2021)
19 For example, Chuzaemon Ōshige was already an experienced maker of kiriko (in the Satsuma style) when he started at

the factory in 1878, and advanced quickly under Emanuel’s instruction to become a master craftsman before the factoryclosed in 1883. Yamaguchi, 200920 Yamaguchi, 200921 Yamaguchi (2009) writes that a 4.0 horsepower steam engine was used at Shinagawa glassworks in 1891. p.295
22 Yamaguchi, 2009, pp.187-189
23 Ōhashi’s birth dates are given by Yamaguchi (1993) and believed to be correct. It was common at the time for children

to begin their training very young, both in Britain and in Japan.
24 <https://www.edokiriko.or.jp/kumiai.html> (22 March 2021)

Emanuel Hauptmann The Father of Japanese Cut Glass

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