Rare Mid century Queensbury Design Glass Dishes

This is a pair of crystal nut dishes (quite a rare item today) designed in the 1960's by David Queensbury for Webb Corbett, known as cascade, and a design featured in the permanent collection of the British Museum.

David Queensberry (b.1929) was Professor of Ceramics and Glass at the Royal College of Art from 1959-83. During the 1950s and 1960s he designed ceramics for the Staffordshire pottery industry and in 1966 founded his own design company, Queensbury Hunt, together with Martin Hunt (b.1942), a student and later head of Glass at the RCA.

This is one of a series of luxury pieces that he created for Webb Corbett. The firm commissioned him to create a range of modern glass in 1963. using simple cylindrical vessels, he designed four geometric patterns for which he won the Duke of Edinburgh's Award for Elegant Design in 1964. A second range, designed in 1965, consisted of four further patterns, including this one, 'Cascade'. Queensberry's reworking of the traditional sparkle and intricacy of cut glass to conform to current demand for simplicity of line set a new standard of modern elegance in British cut glass ware. These commissions were all in the more expensive ranges