Alongside his career with antique glass dealer Delomosne, he kept fast motorbikes, did petit-point, and had a passion for early church music
Martin Mortimer, who has died aged 94, was the world’s leading authority on English glass chandeliers; in a 62-year career with the glass and porcelain dealers Delomosne, he established an unrivalled reputation.
The publication in 2000 of Mortimer’s book The English Glass Chandelier underlined what had been plain for years: his absolute command of his subject. He was not only held in the highest regard in the world of antiques, serving with distinction on the Council of the British Antique Dealers’ Association for nine years – and awarded a Long Service Award in 1990 – but was also consulted by museums, fellow dealers and collectors across the world.
If this eminence was no more than his learning deserved, it tended to obscure a hinterland more unexpected than Mortimer’s correct exterior suggested. He delighted, for example, in running a series of powerful motorcycles; took equal pleasure in the most intricate petit-point; had a passion for early church music, yet found opera painful and pointless. Most poetry he considered incomprehensible, but he was profoundly moved by Anglican ritual.
There was a kind of subtle subversion behind almost everything that informed him. It was reflected in his Abraham Lincoln style beard, no less obviously by his height, 6 ft 3 in. Yet he had a stock of seemingly limitless kindness and took endless pains in helping, guiding, advising. He could be suddenly sharp, though never maliciously, and he had an understated humour that could be devastating.