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Deluxe beacon to every Rock tour and chic shopping siren for the countless cruise ships which sashay into the country’s dolphin-filled harbour, Gibraltar Crystal was set up in 1995 by long-time friends and forever glass lovers, Stuart and Karen Menez and Paul and Marie-Anne Montegriffo. Suppliers to high street stores Dickens and Jones and Selfridges for many years, the company’s ethos to create entirely hand made crystal-ware that can be customised at no extra cost, prompted them to give up working with ‘the big boys’, despite cries that they were ‘harebrained’. “We were being pulled in the wrong direction,” explains company director, Paul.

A decade of glass production later, with sales worldwide and an A-grade list of clients that include the Royal Family, Victor Chandler and The Commonwealth Broadcasting Association, Gibraltar Crystal have made a hare of that ‘harebrained’ epithet, proving, au contraire, that running swift as a fleet-footed mammal against the current tide of mass-produced machine-made items spells very brainy business indeed.

Roman historian, Pliny, tells us that glass was discovered by the Phoenicians, those intrepid voyageurs who first spotted Gibraltar 3000 years ago. According to Pliny, a group of sailors, dining al fresco on a quiet beach, lit a fire beneath blocks of soda on which they stood their cooking pots. During the night the soda fused with the sand beneath and when the sailors awoke to a new dawn - Eureka! They found glass (from old German glas meaning brightness) stuck to their pots.

Fast-forward a few centuries and you’ll find innovative Egyptians wrapping the molten material around cores of clay and dung, then rolling these tubes on a marble surface till they cooled into rough-hewn drinking vessels. Wind on a couple of centuries more and you’ll see the Romans experimenting with blowing molten bubbles on the end of a hollow pipe, and inventing the technique which revolutionised the glass creation process.

Given the transparent stuff’s long pedigree, it’s surprising to learn that crystal, which is made by adding lead oxide to molten glass, was only discovered in 1676, by Englishman George Ravenscroft. “We are more sensitive to health concerns today, so we recently took the ground breaking decision to use barium, instead of lead, for making our crystal ware, with excellent results,” says Paul Montegriffo. Gibraltar Crystal’s master glass blowers are Stuart Shute, skilled at the notoriously difficult art of blowing air twists, Stuart Quick, who’s been creating glass-ware since the tender age of 15, and Paul Alexander, purveyor of product-ideas to Ralph Lauren and the Royal family. At the company’s store on Casemates square, once the site of public executions and now heart of the Rock’s main shopping artery, a group of us watch bluff, bearded Paul breathe life into this lucent matter which has been around since biblical times.

Gloved and hooded above a crucible of orange honey heated to 2000°F-plus, he first plunges a punty iron into the fire-perfumed lava and garners a pear-drop of molten matter on the tip of this steel rod. The orange bead quivers in the light of the furnace’s fiery flames, which cast shadows on the walls. They are adorned with mediaeval-looking instruments: wooden paddles used for shaping flat areas of glass, fearsome-looking shears for cutting the brittle stuff, and several pairs of what look like dentists’ pliers, which serve to pluck and pinch details out of the cooling matter. I reflect that the costumes of this sizzling theatre might have changed, but the tools of today’s glassmakers are pretty much the same as in Pliny’s time.

Paul shapes the bead of glass, rolling it on a smooth, steel plate called a marver, then hands the punty iron to Stuart, whilst an apprentice reverently hands him the glass blowing pipe. Stuart transfers the blob of glass to the tip of Paul’s blowing pipe and we watch, fascinated, as he breaths the bubble to a fist-sized ectoplasm, then blows it into a vase mould, constantly moving the rod back and forth so that the glass keeps its shape.

Slowly, slowly the ugly-duckling blob swells into a stunning, swan-necked vase. we who have witnessed this miracle can understand why glass is called ‘gold’ in the book of Job and why Venetian glass makers were forbidden to leave the Island of Murano, lest they exchanged the secrets of their precious trade. “Glass has a magic about it that seems to fascinate both makers and owners,” said Thomas Buechner, first director of The Corning Museum of Glass in the USA.

Paul Montegriffo echoes these sentiments when he says, “It never ceases to amaze us that by melting silica sand, a rather dull material, the wonderfully transparent and clear substance glass is formed.”

Maybe we’re captivated because, in the words of 16th-century poet George Herbert, man himself is ‘a brittle crazy glass’? Little matter, because Gibraltar Crystal has applied the miracles of modern technology to this age-old art, giving you the chance to get your own hands on some of that transparent stuff. “With today's technologies distance is really no barrier. By simply emailing your image, logo and text, the piece you require can be designed, produced, engraved and sent to you anywhere in the world,” says Paul.

Whether it’s a striking set of ruby goblets to deck your dinner table, an eye-catching crackle vase to liven up the hallway, or a custom-made paperweight to cap those boring bills, why not make like Victor Chandler and HRM this festive season and enthrall friends and family with your own range of dazzling crystal-ware?

Gibraltar Crystal, Grand Casemates square, Gibraltar; tel: +350 50136, or visit www.gibraltarcrystal.com

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