Passed through Manchester's airport recently, where one of three chandeliers from the original 1960's terminal was dismantled as the basis for a rather less ambitious display altogether in the newest international terminal. A note I hadn't previously spotted reported how the remaining two had been donated to museums, like this one here at St Helens' World of Glass.
And something I hadn't seen intact for five decades or more. But St Helens is where the float glass method was introduced in 1959 and which 90% of the world employs in its production.
There's a connection with flight in a way, too, for all three of the historical means of making window-glass involved manipulating gravity, like the Wright Brothers did.
Originally there'd be a gob of molten glass on a stick which you'd spin into a disc to cut into shape. Later still it would be blown like a bottle and hung in a molten state over a furnace so that it would form a cylinder that could be rolled out like pastry. And finally there was molten glass formed on molten tin, so that gravity did the rest in issuing the flattest-possible product.
The process reduced the cost of making glass by five times, so that inevitably a company as successful as Pilkington's fell into foreign ownership. Now building on Mrs Thatcher's success in destroying industry, the government hope to send it the way of steel as too environmentally costly in use of energy... which is already priced higher than elsewhere in Europe.
So get to St Helens to see what's left of it. They've exhibitions too and the artwork I liked most appears below. Had I £7000 and been Maurice Saatchi I'd have bought it, but I'm more like the guy in the picture.
The museum has moved from the original Pilkington's site to become a part of the library and cafe. Part of it is accessed by crossing the Sankey Canal, which built in 1757 claims to be the Industrial Revolution's oldest. Fans of the 1761 Bridgewater Canal however point out that theirs was not based on an existing natural waterway.
