English Alabasters
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Glasgow Museums has a collection of 45 English sculptures carved from alabaster. There were numerous sites of alabaster working in England, including York, Lincoln, Burton-on-Trent and London. Traditionally it has been suggested that Nottingham in the English Midlands, supplied by the nearby quarries of Tutbury and Chellaston, was the principal centre of the industry that flourished from the fourteenth to the mid-sixteenth century. The English workshops produced a range of products, including high-status tomb effigies and fine statuary commissioned by an elite clientele. However, it was smaller scale devotional figures and panels that dominated production from the fifteenth century. Manufactured on a semi-industrial scale, thousands of panels and figures were carved for sale on a speculative market, alongside special commissions. Many of these panels were produced for inclusion in multi-panel altarpieces, commonly relaying emotional scenes from the lives of Christ and the Virgin. Individual panels and small devotional images were also produced for personal devotion in both religious foundations and the domestic dwellings of the moderately affluent. Collected by Sir William Burrell and donated to Glasgow in 1944, the collection of English alabasters is of international importance and contains many fine and unique pieces. Particularly notable are the four examples featuring the head of St John the Baptist. Three of these still retain their rare original painted wooden housings, known as tabernacles. In total only five such heads in tabernacles are known. A number of carvings, including panels depicting St Alphaeus and St Mary Cleophas, and St Erasmus and St Faith are unique survivals, with no known parallels recorded to date.
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