The Bristol Blue Glass South West Glass Museum (a division of “The Bristol Glass Centre”) holds over 350 items of glass, showing the development of the manufacture of glass from ca. 1500 B.C. to the present day. It contains pieces of Egyptian, Roman, Viking, Anglo Saxon and Medieval glass, but the main interest of the collection lies in the examples of manufacture from all the principal English glass-works of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Examples of the decorative works of James Gibbs and Michael Edkins, the renowned eighteenth century gilders, and signed pieces by Isaac Jacobs, contrast with the spectacular and flamboyant pieces created by the great Stourbridge companies such as Richardsons, Thomas Webb, John Walsh Walsh, and Stevens and Williams during the greatest period of nineteenth century English glass making. The Art Nouveau designs of Stuart and James Powell lead us to Art Deco and the post-war designs of Graham Baxter for Whitefriars and Frank Thrower for Dartington. The story is brought up to date with glass by Jonathan Harris, Martin Fletcher, Stuart Fletcher, and Ian Macdonald, and modern cold-glass workers such as Kevin Barry.
This private collection, certainly one of the most comprehensive in the South-west, and containing items of national importance, is continually being enlarged and added to from world-wide auctions and sales.
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The Bristol Blue Glass Museum holds over 350 items of glass, showing the development of the manufacture of glass from ca. 1500 B.C. to the present day. It contains pieces of Egyptian, Roman, Viking, Anglo Saxon and Medieval glass, but the main interest of the collection lies in the examples of manufacture from all the principal English glass-works of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
