Our Glass Museum provides a brief overview of the glass-making process, featuring numerous examples of interesting pieces.
The museum’s location is fascinating, as it is situated directly before the entrance to our Glassworks – Teign Valley Glass. This means that you can take a walk through the history of glass, straight into a modern glassworks where glass is made before your eyes!
Glass is a fascinating medium to work with because many of the elements used to create colour pigments can be affected during the making process, depending on atmospheric conditions such as temperature and humidity.
One of the most challenging colours to work with is red. Red glass is usually more expensive than other colours due to the high cost of the elements required to produce it. Furthermore, as red is needed to create pink and purple hues, these colours are also seen less often in glass.
Our most popular, if somewhat unusual, item in the Glass Museum is our collection of glass eyes. These obviously bear some resemblance to marbles in their concave shape and would have been made using similar techniques to those used to make marbles.
Glassmakers likely employed lampworking techniques to create the iris and pupil detailing, which were designed to match each person’s unique eye appearance.
Another popular attraction in the Glass Museum is the massive marble machine that occupies a significant portion of the floor space.
Although many visitors may not recognise it immediately for what it does, in its day, this was the first machine we ever used to produce our large marbles (of 30 mm or larger). An explanation of how it works is provided alongside it in the museum.
In this museum, we have attempted to explain the process of how glass is made, featuring early examples dating back to Roman times. Among the many items available for perusal, there are some excellent examples of pieces crafted using various production methods, demonstrating how glassmaking techniques have evolved.
These include a few select items that are uniquely challenging to create. In addition, there are also examples of newer pieces, such as handmade glow-in-the-dark marble varieties, which are exceptionally modern in terms of glassmaking.
We hope you’ll learn something new while taking a stroll through this area. Finding out something new while potentially gaining a new interest is equally important as passing on the Victorian making skills that Teign Valley Glass still aim to do today, to keep those skills alive for years to come.