The National Glass Centre is a cultural venue and

visitor attraction A tourist attraction is a place of interest that tourists visit, typically for its inherent or an exhibited natural or cultural value, historical significance, natural or built beauty, offering leisure and amusement. Types Places of natural b ...

located in

Sunderland Sunderland () is a port city in Tyne and Wear, England. It is the City of Sunderland's administrative centre and in the Historic counties of England, historic county of County of Durham, Durham. The city is from Newcastle-upon-Tyne and is on t ...

North East England North East England is one of nine official regions of England at the first level of ITL for statistical purposes. The region has three current administrative levels below the region level in the region; combined authority, unitary authorit ...

. It is part of the

University of Sunderland , mottoeng = Sweetly absorbing knowledge , established = 1901 - Sunderland Technical College1969 - Sunderland Polytechnic1992 - University of Sunderland (gained university status) , staff = , chancellor = Emeli ...

Background

The National Glass Centre is located in

, on the north banks of the

River Wear The River Wear (, ) in North East England rises in the Pennines and flows eastwards, mostly through County Durham to the North Sea in the City of Sunderland. At long, it is one of the region's longest rivers, wends in a steep valley through th ...

, on the former site of

J.L. Thompson and Sons J.L. Thompson and Sons was a shipyard on the River Wear, Sunderland, Tyne and Wear, Sunderland, which produced ships from the mid-18th century until the 1980s. The world-famous Liberty Ship was among the designs to be created, produced and manuf ...

shipyard. The centre is close to the site of St. Peter's Church, part of the original Monkwearmouth-Jarrow Priory built in 674. It was here that

Benedict Biscop Benedict Biscop (pronounced "bishop"; – 690), also known as Biscop Baducing, was an Anglo-Saxon abbot and founder of Monkwearmouth-Jarrow Priory (where he also founded the famous library) and was considered a saint after his death. Lif ...

introduced

glass making Glass production involves two main methods – the float glass process that produces sheet glass, and glassblowing that produces bottles and other containers. It has been done in a variety of ways during the history of glass. Glass container ...

into Britain, by hiring French glaziers to make the windows for the priory. The glass-making industry expanded rapidly in the eighteenth century, driven by an abundance of cheap

coal Coal is a combustible black or brownish-black sedimentary rock, formed as rock strata called coal seams. Coal is mostly carbon with variable amounts of other elements, chiefly hydrogen, sulfur, oxygen, and nitrogen. Coal is formed when dea ...

and high-quality imported

sand Sand is a granular material composed of finely divided mineral particles. Sand has various compositions but is defined by its grain size. Sand grains are smaller than gravel and coarser than silt. Sand can also refer to a textural class of s ...

. Sunderland glass became known throughout the country. In later years, the

Pyrex Pyrex (trademarked as ''PYREX'' and ''pyrex'') is a brand introduced by Corning Inc. in 1915 for a line of clear, low-thermal-expansion borosilicate glass used for laboratory glassware and kitchenware. It was later expanded to include kitchenwa ...

brand of glassware was manufactured in Sunderland. In 2007, the last two remaining glass firms in Sunderland -

Corning Glass Works Corning Incorporated is an American multinational technology company that specializes in specialty glass, ceramics, and related materials and technologies including advanced optics, primarily for industrial and scientific applications. The co ...

and

Arc International Arc Holdings is the holding company of the Arc Group, specializing in the design and manufacturing of glass tableware. The Arc Group markets its collections in France and exports them abroad under the registered trademarks Luminarc, Arcopal, Cr ...

(who make Pyrex) - announced they would close. Despite the decline in the industry, in 1998 the centre was opened for £17 million. It was funded by the Arts Council in conjunction with the

Tyne and Wear Development Corporation The Tyne and Wear Development Corporation (TWDC) was established in 1987 to develop land on the banks of the River Tyne and the River Wear in England. Its flagship developments included the regeneration of the East Quayside in Newcastle, Royal Q ...

, European Regional Development Fund and Sunderland City Council. The centre, located alongside the university's St. Peter's campus, continued the regeneration of the banks of the Wear.

Experience

The National Glass Centre is constructed from

glass Glass is a non-crystalline, often transparent, amorphous solid that has widespread practical, technological, and decorative use in, for example, window panes, tableware, and optics. Glass is most often formed by rapid cooling (quenching) of ...

and

steel Steel is an alloy made up of iron with added carbon to improve its strength and fracture resistance compared to other forms of iron. Many other elements may be present or added. Stainless steels that are corrosion- and oxidation-resistant ty ...

. Visitors can walk on its glass roof and look down into the centre below. There is a total of 3,250 square metres of glass on the roof, and it can hold 460 people on at any one time. Each glass panel on the roof is 6 cm thick. The centre contains a

museum A museum ( ; plural museums or, rarely, musea) is a building or institution that cares for and displays a collection of artifacts and other objects of artistic, cultural, historical, or scientific importance. Many public museums make these ...

dedicated to the history of glass-making, and several galleries with changing exhibitions. Hot glass demonstrations provide a context for the museum's collection. The NGC also houses the University of Sunderland's Glass and Ceramics Department and Institute for International Research in Glass. A number of

artist An artist is a person engaged in an activity related to creating art, practicing the arts, or demonstrating an art. The common usage in both everyday speech and academic discourse refers to a practitioner in the visual arts only. However, th ...

s are located on site, and their work can be purchased by visitors in the glass shop. Since August 2006, National Glass Centre dropped its admission fee and is currently free to visit. Since the removal of an admission fee, the centre has seen a rapid increase in visitors. It has also played host to many prestigious events including the 2007 North East Tourism Awards and T4 ''

Transmission with T-Mobile ''Transmission'' (also known for sponsorship reasons as ''Transmission with T-Mobile'') is a British television programme broadcast on Channel 4, offering live performances and interviews of famous music artists, that ran for three series betwee ...

''.

Exhibitions

The National Glass Centre hosts a variety of changing

exhibitions An exhibition, in the most general sense, is an organized presentation and display of a selection of items. In practice, exhibitions usually occur within a cultural or educational setting such as a museum, art gallery An art gallery is a roo ...

in its Contemporary Gallery. Exhibitions have included: Connection to Place - Tim Shaw June - August 2010 Beautifully Crafted - 25 September 2008 – 22 February 2009 The Dark Glass - 6–28 September 2008 Art Forms from the Ocean - 11 April - 31 August 2008

Neon Neon is a chemical element with the symbol Ne and atomic number 10. It is a noble gas. Neon is a colorless, odorless, inert monatomic gas under standard conditions, with about two-thirds the density of air. It was discovered (along with krypton ...

- 1 December 2007 – 24 March 2008 One-off Factory, ''featuring Mathias Bengtsson and Anne Vibeke Mou'' - 6 October - 18 November 2007 North + South - 1 July - 23 September 2007

Lynette Wallworth Lynette Wallworth is an Australian artist and filmmaker, known for her use of emerging technologies such as virtual reality (VR), and interactive installations. She is known for her 2016 VR project ''Collisions'', which tells of the "collision" ...

- 17 March - 17 June 2007 Snowdomes - 25 November 2006 – 4 March 2007 Lybensky & Brychtova ''(What then Shall we Choose? Weight or Lightness?)'' - 17 July - 12 November 2006 Wearing Glass - 12 May - 9 July 2006 Trip the Light Fantastic - 10 February - 30 April 2006

References

External links

*
National Glass Centre on Wearmouth-Jarrow
{{Authority control Glass museums and galleries Art museums and galleries in Tyne and Wear Museums in the City of Sunderland Sunderland