UK campaigners & international glass fans have joined forces to help strengthen efforts to save Broadfield House Glass Museum from closure. The newly-formed national group aims to preserve & enhance the glass collection & archives based at the Museum. The group was formed following a meeting held at London's Victoria & Albert museum on 25 Feb/10, chaired by Brent Richards, the architect who designed Broadfield's pioneering glass pavilion. The group brings together the Contemporary Glass Society, The Association for The History of Glass, The Worshipful Company of Glass Sellers, The Glass Association, the National Museums Association, the Arts Council, & a number of glass dealers & collectors. Campaigner Jan Hendry, of the Kingswinford based Save Our Glass Heritage campaign, said: This is a big step forward & we're excited this national group has been formed. We can only progress from here - the council will have to listen to a national group. We want to celebrate glass in this area & promote it properly. Stephen Pollock-Hill, president of British Glass 2010 & curator of 20th Century British Glass Museum, said: "Twice in recent years has the Stourbridge area seen two marvellous glass collections split up & lost from the area." The Thomas Webb Museum of Dennis Hall was sold off to American museums & collectors in the mid 1980s by Coloroll, before they went into liquidation, & the wonderful Georgian building turned into flats.And, the Royal Brierley glass collection was split up & sold, with only a few pieces going to Broadfield House in the late 1990s. This group is determined to prevent a third such event happening to an area that has been the centre of the finest British glassware since Paul Tysack from Lorraine set up the first glasshouse in the area at Kingswinford in 1612, nearly four hundred years ago." The newly-formed national steering group will work together with Dudley Council to protect Broadfield and will hold another meeting at the end of March.
