Glassblowing

In July 2020, Carl Nordbruch, our glassblower for over 20 years began blowing glass at Wilkinson’s new glass house in Sittingbourne, Kent. Born in 1971 on the Isle of Wight, UK, Carl is a graduate of the Royal College of Art .

Aged 16 Carl left school and with just one O Level. “I remember getting a call a few weeks after leaving,” he recalls. ”It was the dole phoning to say they’d found me two possible jobs. One was working with a pest control company and the other was at a glass studio.”

What followed was a seven year apprenticeship at the internationally renowned Isle Of Wight Glass Studio in St Lawrence. “I worked with Peter Riley, he is an incredible craftsman and really taught me everything that I know. By the time I was 24 I was ready to move on and went to work at Wolverhampton University. I was a demonstrator, teaching glass blowing all day, every day, for two years before going to the Royal College to complete an MA in Ceramics and Glass.

All through my MA I was making pieces of glass and selling them to support myself and my partner. I then went and worked for another studio in the area but unfortunately the owner went bust and everyone lost their jobs. My wife was nine months pregnant with our first child so we needed to think fast.”

It was at this point that Carl came full circle and decided to relocate his family and equipment back to the island. Here he and his wife set up an emergency studio in the barn in Colwell Bay, Freshwater.

That emergency studio ended up being a more permanent residence where Carl spent over 10 years blowing before he took up Wilkinson’s offer to set up a more spacious and larger glasshouse in Kent.