Hardman & Co.

Hardman & Co., otherwise John Hardman Trading Co., Ltd., founded 1838, began manufacturing stained glass in 1844 and became one of the world's leading manufacturers of stained glass and ecclesiastical fittings. It was wound up in 2008.

John Hardman senior, (1766–1844), of Handsworth, then in Staffordshire, England (and now part of Birmingham), was the head of a family business designing and manufacturing metalwork. He was described as the ‘opulent button maker and medallist’. In the 1830s Augustus Welby Pugin was commissioned by the Roman Catholic Bishop, Thomas Walsh, to design a suitable church to house the remains of St Chad, which had been rescued from destruction at Lichfield Cathedral during the Reformation. When the building was consecrated in 1841 as Saint Chad's Cathedral, it was the first Roman Catholic cathedral to be built in England since the Reformation. For the recently converted Catholic, Pugin, this was a commission of great importance.

Pugin first had contact with the John Hardmans during the construction of St Chad's Chapel, the forerunner to the cathedral scheme. John Hardman junior, (1812–67), left the family business in 1838 and set up on his own to manufacture ecclesiastical metalwork. Pugin employed Hardman's to provide metalwork for St Chad's Cathedral. Hardman was an enthusiastic donor, giving the rood screen to the cathedral and being recognised for his provision to various charities by the gift of the Hardman Chantry in which John Hardman senior was interred in 1844, and which remained the family burial place.

From 1845, at the urging of Pugin, John Hardman entered the burgeoning industry of stained glass manufacture. He was joined by his nephew, John Hardman Powell (1827–95) who married Pugin’s daughter Anne in 1850, and claimed to be Pugin’s only pupil. Powell became the chief designer from about 1849, prior to Pugin’s death in 1852. The company took part in the Great Exhibition of 1851 in London, exhibiting the great chandelier designed for Alton Towers.

Hardman and Powell collaborated with A.W. Pugin's son, E.W. Pugin, firstly in the design of the funeral arrangements of John Talbot, 16th Earl of Shrewsbury in November 1852. The collaboration between the Hardman firm and the Pugins was to continue after E.W. Pugin’s death in 1875 with the later firm, Pugin & Pugin. This collaboration lasted for three generations and was a major influence on Catholic church architecture and decoration in particular and the Gothic Revival in general.

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