James Tassie: A Maker of the Scottish Enlightenment

Responsible for modelling a host of portrait medallions ‘of the first people in the Kingdom’, making plaster casts of the famous Portland Vase, and a remarkable commission of 15,800 glass paste gems for Catherine the Great of Russia, the Scottish-born modeller, collector, inventor and businessman James Tassie (1735-1799) was one of the most prolific artists of his day. However, he is continually overlooked in eighteenth-century scholarship, lost between the cracks of traditional art history and curatorial discourse.

Born in Pollokshaws in Glasgow, Tassie first trained as a stonemason and attended the Foulis Academy in Glasgow. He later moved to Dublin, where he worked with Dr Henry Quin to develop a new formula for a vitreous form of glass paste, before establishing a workshop in London in 1766. This talk considers Tassie's broader artistic networks and investigates his experimental material process as he refined his technique for reproducing gems in the fashionable antique style. Objects now in the Royal College of Physicians of Ireland and previously unknown letters between Quin and Tassie reveal the ongoing frustrations regarding this evolving tacit knowledge, including the availability of raw materials and Tassie's own designs for new furnace technology.