Sunderland Glass Museum

Vivien and I had a day out at the Sunderland Glass Museum (actually, it's called the National Glass Centre, but neither of worked out why). Sadly I forgot my camera, but you all know what glass looks like, right? If not, you can take a tour at the link above.

It was an interesting combination of science and art, this museum. Parts were aimed at children (I got those) and others at scientifically minded adults (Much was over my head. I got my only-ever "D", in junior high physics. I struggle to grasp 3-dimensional ideas, never mind invisible forces).

We visited the featured art exhibit and whilst I mainly thought the artist was having us on – a frequent experience when looking at modern stuff – it did demonstrate the similar qualities of glass and water and that was sort of interesting. I knew it, of course, but hadn’t thought about it like that before. So I guess it qualifies as art, but this art wasn’t useless…you could actually water your horse or your dogs at those metal troughs.

Then there was the science. First of all, glass is made from heating of sand (silica), lime (for stability, else it would melt in water) and soda. There were interesting samples of naturally created glass: obsidian (from volcanos), tektites (from meteoritic impact) and fulgurites (formed when lightning strikes sand).

Glass and time could be said to have a relationship, in that we can measure time in an hourglass, freeze time using a camera lens and see the distant past in space using a telescope.

The science room had many hands-on exhibits to play with. I would love to have had a camera to snap a picture of Vivien and me in the carnival mirror, both about 2 feet tall. We fiddled with some glass and coloured lights; the principles of colour and light are quite different to those of colour and paint. (For an almost comprehensible explanation of this, and a cracking read, see Dick Francis’s book, Reflex). There were exhibits about how the eye works (We actually see everything upside down, our brains just turn it around for us); about optical correction and how things look through a microscope; about how prisms refract light. There was an exhibit that talked about the speed of light and another about how the brain can read some words backwards and upside down but not others, which was amusing.

There was one exhibit that shows you as others see you, an interesting concept. As an aside, I sometimes look in the mirror and see (sober, even) a likeness to my beautiful mother. Most of the time I see Timothy Spall's older, but slimmer, sister. This mirror showed me the latter, but more importantly it demonstrated how used we are to seeing our reverse in the mirror. I looked in a regular mirror and raised my left hand, then stepped around the corner and was completely confused because it looked like I had my right hand up. It was the kind of confusion where your brain gets a bit dizzy and your stomach flips. I didn’t really understand it until later at the house, Vivien demonstrated this for Bill and I saw that yes, when she sits across from me and raises her left hand, it looks to me as though she has her right hand up because it is on my right hand side. The penny dropped; of course all this paragraph isn’t worth even a penny. We were talking on the way down about how differently our brains seem to work after retirement (more clumsy, less decisive); this was a defining example for me, but I’m not going back to work just now, in spite of it.

Then we made our way to the glass blowing exhibition. We got side-tracked by some students, a boy and a girl, who were working, poking the long metal tube into the orange-hot furnaces and handling the blob of glass either by rolling the tube on two horizontal bars to keep the force of gravity even, or manipulating the blob with huge tweezers, thick gloves or asbestos pads. They were clearly learning as neither seemed to make much progress. Then we heard a voice though a microphone and realized the presentation was in a room at the end.

Between the Mackem accent and the poor acoustics I didn’t understand a great deal of the woman's explanation, but watching the young man work was magic. He had the muscles and the very large glass of drinking water that I expected of a glass blower, having read Shattered, another Dick Francis book. What I hadn’t read about was that he moved with the elegant confidence of a dancer. I can imagine that working with something so dangerous and potentially disfiguring as mobile, molten glass and the extreme heat of the ovens, this would be a life-saving grace. Thinking back to the students, the girl still moved around like she was any old where, but the young man was beginning to develop his Astaire style.

When we first arrived I would have said the demonstrator was making a vase, but then it was a wide mouthed bowl and finally a lovely fluted plate. It was placed in an annealing oven, just as I expected, as glass that cools too quickly can shatter, and if the Francis book is right, even explode. Even if not, it still made a great story.

After that we browsed in the shop. Some of the glass jewelry there was gorgeous and I read about an exhibit of sea glass jewelry. I only recently heard about sea glass from surfing the net a while back and have collected any suitable pieces (mostly green, white or pale blue) from beaches near and far. Chris, Jane’s husband, now faithfully collects it for me from his beach at Avoca, bless him. According to the artist whose work was in the museum shop, glass workers in this area used to fling their leftover glass into the sea; the glass works around here closed down in the 1930s. She says she finds all her own, so I'm thinking I may need to go beach combing south of the Tyne or around the Wear more often. I find sea glass a fascinating subject all by itself: trash becoming treasure!

In the shop I also saw and recognized this girl’s work. I say girl, I’ve no idea how old she is, only that she is the niece of a friend from the running club. I managed to resist it all. I need more jewelry like I need warts to wear.

Then we had lunch overlooking the River Wear and the Port of Sunderland. We hogged the table long after we finished our food and tea, chattering away. Finally we made our way back to my house and Vivien came in for a cup of coffee until Bill came home from work and she made her way home for dinner.

There is nothing really remarkable about all this to you, I know, but it is to me. For one, we laughed like girls all day. I don’t laugh out loud very often, so this is great fun. We don’t see each other more than once a month on average, if that, so we never run out of what to say. Also, this is a lady who used to be my boss off and on through the vagaries and misery of my employment in the NHS. She was a tough cookie but a good boss, and somewhere along the line we became friends. She, and her husband, retired about a year after I did. That friendship is one of the valued gifts that moving to this soggy island with its complicated culture has given me.

I’m looking forward to our, as yet unplanned, day out!