length of the masts and add flags on top. (11) Make a bottle, leaving the bottom open. (12) Place the ship inside the bottle via the open bottom, and hold it in position with corrugated cardboard if necessary. (13) Check that the central leg on the ship is touching the bottle wall and ready for fusing. Heat the spot very well on a vertical flame. (14) Repeat the heating several times until the join becomes smooth. Check from all angles, making sure that no deep creases or sharp ends are left. (15) Lamp-anneal around the join. If there is a grey stress-band visible, flash it with a slightly hotter annealing flame until it disappears. (16) Close the bottom of the bottle. In Sunderland, the people who led the glass ships in bottles boom were redundant scientific glassblowers from James A. Jobling Ltd, the local Pyrex factory. Historically, Jobling had become established as a pressed-glass maker, but this visionary company later shifted its focus to borosilicate glass. It acquired patent rights from Corning Glass Works to manufacture and market ‘Pyrex’ in the British Empire, excluding Canada in 1921, and scientific glassblowing began in 1932. Production grew during and after World War II, where there was a demand for radar tubes, laboratory apparatus and various components to supply other industries. Each colliery in the region had a small on-site laboratory to analyse gas, and consequently, there was much work making and repairing glass equipment until the 1970s. However, reflecting the decline of heavy industry, the Laboratory Division at Jobling started shrinking in 1972. The decline of scientific glassblowing was, in turn, the dawn of the glass ships in bottles business. The newly redundant scientific glassblowers, including my mentors Norman Veitch MBE and Brian Jones MBE, applied their lampworking expertise to making glass ships in bottles. As many as ten individual studios were established in Sunderland by former scientific glassblowers, and they produced almost exclusively glass ships in bottles
Flying Dutchman, 2018 • Lampworked and latheworked borosilicate glass, filled with Krypton gas. • 10cm diameter, 50cm length.
throughout the 1980s. The business grew from a cottage industry into a successful commercial enterprise, generating employment for former Jobling lampworkers, as well as the local community. In early 1990, one of these ships in bottles makers, Mayflower Glass, established a mass-production system. Records suggest that Mayflower was able to make more than 40,000 ships in bottles per month at peak production. Its products were exported to more than 40 different countries, and the firm received the Queen’s Export Award in 1992 and 1993. Mayflower’s success, however, caused severe price slashing and a decline in quality. Glass ships in bottles, which had been luxury giftware sold at jewellery shops in the 1970s, finally became seen as consumer kitsch. Other smaller studios could not compete, and they ended up making other types of ornaments or eventually closed. Mayflower outsourced production to China in 2005, which marked the demise of the ships in bottles boom in Sunderland. Yancheng Mayflower Arts and Crafts in China, the joint venture founded by Mayflower UK and a Chinese factory in 2005, uses machines and tools transported from Sunderland. The volume of
IL PERCORSO DI VETRO, THE GLASS PATH
production reached a peak in 2010, when they made 30,000 ships in bottles per month. However, it is noteworthy that the scale of mass-production in China never exceeded that of the 1990s in Sunderland. Mayflower UK was liquidated in 2017, and now ironically, Yancheng Mayflower Arts and Crafts is its only surviving descendant, keeping the legacy of glass ships in bottles mass-production alive. Today, the business is very quiet, and 2000 ships in bottles is a large order for them. Since these orders are often too small to warrant running the massproduction machines, the factory has returned to manual production for some processes. Whether this will lead to a return to quality, or the ultimate degeneration of the industry, remains to be seen. Demonstrating at the GAS conference in Murano was an excellent opportunity, allowing me to introduce the history of glass ships in bottles, and show the making process and techniques. It was also a chance to raise awareness of this largely neglected aspect of our shared history and pay homage to those pioneers whose skill and resilience launched the ships in bottles boom. Now, it might be our turn, as lampwork artists, to take the tradition of glass ships in bottles to the next stage. 89