The Studio

Verrière was set up in Ardross in 1946 by a returning RAF airframe fitter who had learned to cut glass repairing bomb-damaged windows in the Midlands. The building is a former net loft on Kiln Wynd, and the north light in the main studio is the reason it has never moved.

Who is here

Four of us: two glaziers, a painter, and a conservator who is here three days a week and at somebody’s scaffold the other two. We take one apprentice at a time, for four years, and we have had eleven since 1963.

The glass store

About eleven hundred sheets, racked vertically by colour and by house. A good deal of it is no longer made — two of our suppliers have closed since 2008 — and the ruby stock in particular is now effectively irreplaceable, which changes how we design with it.

The kiln

A 1.2 by 0.8 metre electric bed kiln, three thermocouples, and a programme we have not materially changed since 1994. It fires at night. Whoever opens up in the morning opens the kiln first, which is the best part of anyone’s day and the reason the apprentices come in early.

Visiting

By appointment, and gladly. If you are commissioning a window, we would rather you came here than that we came to you — the glass store does more persuading than any amount of talking.