Making Irish Crystal

The raw materials of mainly silica sand, lead oxide and potassium carbonate are melted in one of three single pot furnaces.

Each pot contains approximately 600 kilograms of batch (mixture) and is melted overnight to be ready to work each morning. The painstaking process then begins.

Blowers remove a ball of molten glass on the end of a blowing pipe, which is then worked into the desired shape. A team of blowers will use up all the contents of a pot in one working day. In the evening, it will be filled again, ready for the following day).

Immediately following the blowing process each piece of crystal is then placed in an Annealing Oven, which cools it to room temperature in three hours 

Designs are cut on to each blank piece by our cutters using diamond tipped wheels. 

A unique method of fine finish chemical polishing is the final step in this long process. This step, like all others is executed by hand.

A time consuming procedure, but one that preserves the integrity of the cuts, so that light falling on sharply defined angles, is perfectly refracted into a myriad of colours portraying a diamond like brilliance.

Each piece is then packed and ready for sale or dispatch. 

Blown by mouth . . . shaped, moulded, cut and polished by hand . . . Such is the essence of Heritage Irish Crystal

There are, of course, less expensive ways to produce crystal - but none that is better. For the true connoisseur of the art form, there exists no finer representation of that which can be wrought by the skilled hands of man. 

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