For two and a half centuries Bristol was at the centre of a buoyant glass industry but, by the turn of the 20th century, it was an industry all but lost to the city.
Pamela Parkes looks back at the history of glass making in Bristol and discovers how a small group of master craftsmen resurrected glass making in the city.
A revival of an ancient art
"In the late 17th and 18th century glass making was very important to Bristol," says Karin Walton, curator of glass at Bristol City Museum and Art Gallery.
She's talking to me in the museum's glass gallery where, behind protective glass, rows of exquisitely cut crystal glasses, decanters and vases glitter in the light but, behind their beauty, lies a dark past.
The industry was a filthy one - belching out noxious fumes and smoke which hung over the city.
During visit to Hotwells in 1739 the poet Alexander Pope evocatively described the glass making industry in Bristol as “twenty odd Pyramids smoking over the Town.”
It was not meant as a romantic description – Pope described the reality of an industry that churned out pollution and meant Bristol was “constantly darkened and in dirt, with the inhabitants are almost suffocated with noxious effluvia.”
Redcliffe, close to the river and, at the time, just outside the city limits, was the centre of the industry. The skyline was dominated by the glass works distinctive tall, brick built cones which produced a strong draught needed to burn coal.
The industry thrived thanks to a series of economic and geographical coincidences - good supply of fuel, established trading links along the River Severn and out to the Atlantic. It also had easy access to other raw materials used in glass making such as sand from the Redcliffe Caves, kelp from Bridgwater and clay from further north along the Severn.
"People tend to think only of Bristol Blue glass," says Karin, “but the bulk of the production was window and bottle glass. There was a lot of housing development at the time and a large wine and sherry industry so they needed the bottles.”
Bristol's glass making industry also rode on the back of the city's success as a trading port and huge amounts of glass were exported to America.
The industry also had darker connections to the slave trade. Jim McNeill, from the Bristol Radical History Group, says most of the city's merchants had interests in the glasshouses and "much of their investment capital derived from the trade in slave-grown sugar from America and the Caribbean".
"The sugar trade stimulated the growth in the distilling industry which, along with spa water and the more established industries of cider, wine and beer, provided new opportunities for producers of glass bottles.
"The expansion of colonialism and the resulting affluence both abroad and at home stimulated demand for window glass and expensive drinking glasses," he added.
But growth was not to last – from 1820 the age old business curses of taxation and shrinking markets saw the glass houses close down one by one.
"Bristol failed to modernise," says David Barry, a glass maker at Bristol Blue Glass. “It didn't adapt to using the new moulding techniques and blowing machines. It was so expensive to produce Bristol glass and it could not keep up.”
By 1923 the last glasshouse Powell & Ricketts on Redcliffe Way closed and its owner AC Powell wrote that “glass making is now one of the lost industries of Bristol”
And that, it seemed, was that for glass making in Bristol.
A glass making school
The resurrection of the industry came 65 years later thanks to the unlikely figure of former punk band guitarist and pirate radio DJ James Adlington.
Born in Bristol and with glass making in his blood – both sides of his family had worked in the industry – he was convinced there was still a market for blue glass.
In 1988 Adlington founded Bristol Blue Glass, with the help of fellow glass maker Peter St Clair.
The glass works is now based on the Bath Road in Brislington and not only produces Bristol blue glass, but acts as a school for the next generation of glass makers.
On the sweltering hot summers day when I visited, the team of craftsmen and apprentices were working seamlessly together in the intense heat, creating exquisitely delicate Bristol Blue glassware using techniques unchanged since Roman times.
"The boss likes to say it's a young man's game," says hot floor manager David Barry.
Apprenticeships in the ancient art last around eight years but "to truly master a skill like this can take a lifetime," he adds.
“It takes a long time to progress and learn the ancient techniques which we use to produce our glass...I'm in awe of it constantly,” he says.
“Lots of young people are studying design at university with glass module and once you start working with glass it is a magical material and you want to do it all the time,” he adds.
A hidden history
The blue of Bristol Blue comes from adding cobalt oxide to clear chunks of glass called cullet.
The mixture is put into the furnace overnight in a process called charging.
Historians are unsure when the first Bristol blue glass was produced but it quickly became popular.
In the 1780s Lazurus and Isaac Jacobs were the most famous makers of Bristol blue glass, they held a royal warrant and made glass for royalty and aristocracy across Europe.
Little remains of the Bristol glassworks industry but archaeological digs have hinted at the huge scale of the glass industry in Bristol
Bristol Archaeological Services excavated the site of an 18th-century glassworks on Portwall Lane.
They found remains of a glass cone 21m in diameter built by Warrens, Cannington and Company in 1768.
The cone acted as a giant chimney, probably up to 30m high, for the furnace on which the glass was melted in large crucibles.
However, now the only remaining evidence of Bristol's industry heritage is found in a modern hotel in the heart of Redcliffe.
The Kiln Resturant is based in the foot of an original 17th century glassworks on Redcliffe Way.
