So, mid-July saw our 25th anniversary of Twists Glass Studio.

It’s been a very interesting 25 years which has seen me perfecting my self-education into cane working techniques.

To learn these processes, it took many years of practising during dinner breaks while I was employed.

As soon as Twists opened this learning curve was greatly speeded up. I learnt to make filigree or twisted cane, reticello which has a lattice network, and murrine in all of its forms. But my favourite cane technique has to be merletto, which has a random filigree effect. We actually came runner-up to the Czech giants Moser in a Tableware International Award in 2019 with merletto designs.

Not wanting to follow all the other studios, we broke away from the Swedish style with our own, a sort of cross between factory and studio, but using cane work designs.

We became “disrupters”. This wasn’t intentional, we just wanted to be different, I wanted to make my designs with class and style that would be worthy of the great masters of Murano.

I look at my self-education into these cane techniques as the reason my work looks different to everyone else’s, I probably make everything in a completely different way to the Murano masters.

Since mid-July 2022, we have worked without using our glass-melting furnace, cutting our carbon footprint from 98.5 tons to just over 4 tons CO2 e. This has been worthwhile to practice inventing new ways for us to work without gathering from a furnace, and doing our bit for the planet. We had been working on this since 2006 when the idea first formulated, but at that time our more popular designs needed that furnace on.

So I collect my pension this June, Sue 3 years later, so we are going to start the winding down process in preparation to stop working. It’s been fun most of the time, but I think we’ll both be glad of a rest from it. I can tidy my garden at last!

The first photo is “Lyra” a merletto and filigree piece, the second my Great Aunt Florrie portrait murrine cane set-up.