transparency and stained-glass painter, decorator and plumber, came to Victoria from Scotland in 1853, presumably in search of gold. (Was the Miss Urie, singer of old Scottish ballads who entertained miners at Bendigo in c.1857-58, a relative?) Later, in partnership with James Ferguson , he set up a plumbing business at 22 Curzon Street, North Melbourne. By 1860, when Ferguson & Urie were listed in Sands & Kenny’s Commercial and General Melbourne Directory under 'Painters, Plumbers, Glaziers and Paperhangers’, they were manufacturing lead for leadlight windows as part of the business. They displayed specimens of their 'Ornamental Glazing in Lead’ at the 1861 Victorian Exhibition preceding the 1862 London International. At the same exhibition the British-trained stained-glass designer John Lamb Lyon , then living in Main Street, Maldon, showed 'Stained Glass’ – presumably made to his design in Britain – and, as 'John L. Lyall’ (an obvious misprint), 'Drawing for Stained Glass’. So by 1862 most of the necessary components were present in Victoria to establish a professional stained-glass manufactory able to produce properly fired stained glass.
Ferguson & Urie ran a display advertisement in Sands & McDougall’s Melbourne Directory for 1864 offering stained-glass windows for 'Churches, Public buildings, Hall Lights, and other purposes, executed at the Stained Glass Works, Curzon Street’. Their earliest known manufactured stained glass, identified by Geoffrey Down, dates from the same year: a Burning Bush window for St Enoch’s United Presbyterian Church, West Melbourne (destroyed), a crudely painted Apostle cycle of three windows for St Andrew’s Presbyterian Church, West Melbourne (now in Box Hill Church) and a large four-light Prince Albert Memorial window in Holy Trinity, Kew (extant, in situ). Lyon, their designer, soon became a name partner.
Unwittingly Ferguson, Urie & Lyon were vying with John Falconer in Sydney (who set up kilns in 1864 to produce windows for Edmund Blacket 's St Mary’s Church of England, Waverley) to be the first commercially viable stained-glass manufacturers in any of the Australian colonies, and the Melburnians seem to have won. Although Ferguson, Urie & Lyon of Melbourne won only a highly commended certificate for their stained-glass samples while J. Falconer of Sydney won a bronze medal for his stained-glass window at the 1870 Sydney Intercolonial Exhibition, Falconer’s superior award was doubtless assisted by the locale. At the 1866 Melbourne Intercolonial Exhibition Ferguson, Urie & Lyon (who were exhibiting stained-glass window designs for the Public Works Department, the Post Office and the Melbourne Public Offices) won a medal for 'Establishing a Manufacture of Stained Glass, creditably executed’. In 1867 the firm advertised: 'Stained Glass Windows for Churches, Public Halls and Hall Lights and other purposes. Executed at the Stained Glass Works, Curzon Street. Designs in any style made and submitted with estimate of cost. Leadlights in Cathedral, Crown Sheet and Ornamental Glass, and Pattern.’ Towards the end of the year they painted transparencies on glass – probably shop windows – to decorate the façades of several Melbourne business premises as part of the city’s decorations in honour of the Duke of Edinburgh’s visit (November 1867-January 1868). John Lamb Lyon continued to be their chief (only?) glass-painter until 1873 when he left to found the major nineteenth-century glassmaking and decorating firm of Lyon & Cottier in Sydney.
By 1872 Ferguson & Urie were exporting glass to Adelaide, South Australia, and to rural areas; their stained-glass window at the entrance to John Dixon Wyselaskie’s country seat Narrapumelap, near Hamilton, Victoria, is dated 1873. According to Zimmer, the pinnacle of their stained-glass career came in 1875 when they had a central Collins Street shop specialising in 'Memorial, Heraldic, and Grisaille Illuminated Commandments and Wall Decorations’ and they won a first-class certificate for their glass at the Melbourne Intercolonial Exhibition. By then the firm had lost the advantages of colonial monopoly, especially as their styles and techniques never seem to have been at all innovative. Throughout the thirty-odd years of the firm’s existence, the design and colouring of their stained-glass windows continued to have an archaic, early Victorian medieval character. Examples of their brightly coloured, rather simple, pictorial stained glass can be found in Christ Church, Geelong ( Christ Enthroned with the Four Evangelists ), St John’s, Clifton Hill, St Cuthbert’s Presbyterian Church, Brighton (c.1888), and in the Caulfield house of Judge Billing, now called Labassa (National Trust). Nevertheless, Ferguson & Urie survived even beyond Urie’s death, in 1890, but with decreasing success. In 1895 their shop was in Franklin Street but by 1899 they had moved back to their old North Melbourne address. Later that year, the business closed down.
- Writers:
- Staff Writer
- Date written:
- 1992
- Last updated:
- 1989
