Historic cabinet brought back to Waterford for €35k

A cabinet decorated 200 years ago with tiny animals made in the first glass factory in Waterford will be back on display in the city after being bought for close to €35,000.

At auction in Exeter, south-west England, the Waterford Museum of Treasures beat other bidders to secure the shell-decorated piece made by the daughter of William Penrose, who co-founded the Waterford Glass House in 1783.

The £23,000 (€28,000) hammer price — before auction fees and taxes of nearly €7,000 were added — was more than the combined price paid earlier yesterday for a collection of more than 70 pieces which came down through five generations to descendants of the Penrose family.

Museum director Eamon McEneaney said it has the world’s biggest collection of early Waterford glass but a one-off item like this will never be up for sale again.

“It’s not just the family name, this is of Waterford,” he said. “All the shells came from Tramore or the local estuary. And the glass animals and the lake the swans are swimming on were made by Gatchells, who took over the factory from the Penroses.

“A lot of visitors come here from Waterford Crystal, and we’ll have it on display in the next few weeks.”

All but one of the 17 lots of glass — ranging from one piece to 30 — which sold for over €26,000 when fees are added, came by descent from William Penrose or his daughter Elizabeth, who spent several years decorating the cabinet and its fantasy grotto.

All but one piece went to a single buyer, believed to be a London-based private collector, bidding by phone. The only lot that buyer did not take home was the most expensive: A Waterford Glass decanter that went under the gavel at £4,700 (€7,050 after fees and taxes) and may have gone to somebody from a different branch of the family.

The glass and cabinet were sold by six sons of the late Alfred MacMullen, a great-great-grandson of William Penrose. He lived in Exeter since the 1930s and brought it over from his family home in Cork in the 1950s after his parents died.

Many pieces were engraved for members of William Penrose’s family or the Robinson family that Elizabeth married into in 1805.

While the first two lots made just over €100 each, bidding then outstripped guide prices as online UK and Irish bidders competed with the phone buyer.

“Some of the principal pieces were always going to do really well, but I was surprised by the prices some of the plainer dishes and bowls made,” said auctioneer Nic Saintey of Bearnes, Hampton, & Littlewood.

A decanter inscribed with the initials ‘JMcM’, believed to be for Corkman and ancestor Joseph MacMullen who died in 1819, made a hammer price of £2,700.

Two groups of glasses from one of Cork’s early 19th-century glassworks sold for £550 and £750 respectively, and 28 wine glasses believed to be from Cork’s Waterloo factory made £1,300.