By her own admission, Janine Christley didn’t know the first thing about glass when she arrived in Stourbridge six years ago. But for the organiser of this weekend’s International Festival of Glass, it is a subject which right now is dominating almost her every waking moment.
“This year’s event is going to be twice as big as the last one,” she says. “It’s a very small team of people organising such a big international festival, and we’re all running round like headless chickens trying to make sure everything is ready.”
It is hoped the festival, which opens tomorrow, will bring 15,000 people from all over the world into the glassmaking heart of the West Midlands.
Top fashion designer Zandra Rhodes, who created clothes for the Princess of Wales, and pop-art sculptor Andrew Logan will be among the many big names attending, as will Express & Star columnist and community historian Carl Chinn.
It is probably the biggest festival of its kind in the world, and already the first visitors have arrived from Australia, the United States, Switzerland, Austria and France.
Janine was very much the driving force behind the festival after arriving in Stourbridge from Gloucestershire and falling in love with the region’s glass industry.
“Not enough was done to let people know about it,” she says. “The Dudley Crystal Festival had been running for a number of years, but in a very small way. We felt we needed something much bigger and brighter to give it an international platform.
The festival was conceived in a meeting at the Ruskin Glass Centre, where Janine works, in April 2003. Around 50 people attended, including glassmaking bosses from the area, as well as representatives from Dudley Council.
Support for the event was overwhelming, and the inaugural International Festival of Glass was held in August 2004.
Janine and her colleagues’ experience of organising community festivals in Gloucestershire proved a big help in the early days, and the festival was an instant success, attracting around 7,000 people into the glassmaking quarter.
But this year’s event - the second International Festival of Glass - is on a much larger scale, and the number of visitors is expected to soar due to the national and international publicity it has attracted.
Hannah Kippax, from Sunderland, was virtually unheard of two years ago, but the festival catapulted her to fame and she is now one of the country’s most respected glass artists.
The 2004 festival also captured the imagination of Matt Poole, who decided to train as a glass artist, and will be among those showing off his work at this weekend’s event.
People often talk about the “Stourbridge glass quarter”, but the term is something of a misnomer, the glassmaking district also taking in neighbouring Kingswinford, Wordsley and Brierley Hill. Organisers have ensured that this is reflected in the festival, with events at the historic Broadfield House Glass Museum in Kingswinford and the Red House glass cone in Wordsley.
The glass industry has seen difficult times since Janine moved to the West Midlands. Within months of her arrival the 224-year-old Royal Brierley Crystal works went into administration, with the loss of scores of jobs, although the company was saved from extinction and now operates from new premises in central Dudley. The following year Stuart Crystal glassworks closed, putting 220 people out of work, and its famous Red House glass cone in Wordsley was bought by Dudley Council and turned into a museum and workshop complex for small-scale glass artists.
In fact, the irony is there probably wouldn’t be an international glass festival had it not been for the closure of another of the region’s biggest glassworks.
In its heyday, Webb & Corbett in Amblecote was one of the world’s leading glassmakers, but in February 1999 its owner Royal Doulton announced it would close with the loss of 40 jobs. The glass cutting studio survived until April the following year, when Royal Doulton quit the site for good with the loss of another 39 jobs.
Out of the ashes of Webb & Corbett sprang the Ruskin Glass Centre, which opened when the Ruskin Mill Educational Trust took on the site in 2000.
The centre, in a Grade Two listed Georgian building on the old factory site, provides a base for several small-scale glass blowers, cutters and artists. It also provides a visitor centre where people can view the whole glassmaking process from start to finish, and buy works produced on the site.
It was this development which led to Janine Christley’s love affair with glass.
“I think it’s wonderful, it captures so much colour and light,” she says.
“I just love the way people work with it, it is so hard and unforgiving, so difficult to work with, the fact you can do so much with it.”
The industry is continuing to face tough times, with soaring energy prices hitting glassmakers hard. Where glassmaking was once one of the West Midlands’ largest industries, employing thousands, cut-price competition from Eastern Europe means the emphasis is now strictly on small-scale, design-led production.
The 45-year-old says there is much more interest these days in collecting rare or interesting pieces, and this will also be reflected in the festival.
Many of the old glassworks may have gone, but the success of the 2004 event shows that the West Midlands is still one of the world’s most respected centres for glassmaking. It looks like the International Festival of Glass has a glittering future ahead of it.
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