Isaac Jacobs

Isaac Jacobs (1757/8-1835), was the inventor of Bristol blue glass. Isaac was one of three children to Lazarus Jacobs, a Jewish immigrant from Frankfort am Main, and Mary Hiscocks, from Templecombe, Somerset. Lazarus moved to Bristol in around 1760, where he began his career as an itinerant glass-cutter. He sold his wares, along with secondhand goods, at Temple Fair in Bristol. In 1774 he set up a glass manufacturing business at 108 Temple Street. Isaac joined his father's business as a partner at age seventeen. Using cobalt oxide imported by William Cookworthy from Saxony, Isaac designed and branded Bristol blue glass as it is known today. The Jacobs family were well-placed to develop Bristol blue glass: German glass engraving was highly prized, and continental Jews worked traditionally with coloured glass. Many of Isaac's glasses, signed by him, can be found in the Victoria and Albert Museum and elsewhere.

In 1786, Lazaus helped fund a new synagogue, where he was honoured by the Jewish community. At the time, the Jewish community was gradually being accepted into Gentile Bristol society. By the early nineteenth century, Jews were moving from 'the Jew quarter' at Temple, to St James's and Brunswick Square. When Lazarus died in 1796, Isaac took over the business, and was able to move his family to 16 Somerset Square Redcliffe, near the glass factory. As the success of Bristol Blue Glass increased, Isaac became a leading member of the Jewish community, while also adopting aspects of Gentility, reflecting the increasing balance of both worlds. Between 1809 and 1814, Isaac was made a freeman of the city of Bristol, moved to a large house he had commissioned in Weston-super-Mare, was granted a coat of arms, and became a member of the Bristol Commercial Rooms. He was making between £15,000 and £20,000 a year.

When the demand for glass dropped, Isaac borrowed money to try and prop up his business. When a loan he made to a friend of £2,000 was not repaid, Isaac could not repay his own debts. In 1820, he was declared bankrupt, and accused of fraud. The charges were dropped, but too late: he sank to being a peddler, returning to the trade of his father. He died in 1835, and was buried in the cemetery he had bought for the Jewish community at St Phillip's twenty years earlier.

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