a proper family business
Heartwood Glass is a family business. Run by Alex & Gavin with help from our two teenage boys we’ve built the business having been inspired by a completely unplanned walk past a glass gallery whilst on holiday in Devon in 2015,
Our Small Business Saturday Top 100 award application challenged us to think about our values and what really inspires us. We narrowed it down to four key areas – Nature, Colour, Community and Sustainability.
Nature
We’re based close to the beautiful Heartwood Forest in Sandridge, near St Albans in Hertfordshire. We take our inspiration from here, the wider local area and from our Scouting and Guiding expeditions to create our handmade glass pieces – of all sizes.
Community
By bringing glass workshops to your location we make this craft accessible to everyone. We’ve been Scout leaders for decades (more than we care to mention) and this means we can easily adapt the workshops to make them a fully inclusive experience for people of all ages.
Colour
We use the highest quality hand rolled kiln glass – which comes in the most amazing range of colours. The combination of these means we can create variations and depths of colour that are unique to your piece of glass.
We’re continually experimenting with the design and firing process to develop our skills and what we create.
Sustainability
We know making glass takes a significant amount of energy so we’re commited to protecting the environment and working hard to fight climate change.
We ensure we reuse packing and make sure our customers can recycle it; and we utilise every bit of glass that comes into the studio – taking the off cuts from larger glass pieces and using them in workshops, and then taking the small pieces and turning them into frit balls so nothing is wasted.
