Peter Layton, a central figure in British studio glass, describes the material as overlooked even as his London Glassblowing studio marks five decades, turns over close to £2m, employs 20 people and sells work from hundreds of pounds to £20,000.
London Glassblowing has operated for 50 years, with turnover near £2 million and a team of about 20 part- or full-time staff.
Layton links wider industry fragility — closures like the National Glass Centre — to the decline of traditional glassmaking hubs and stresses the role of studios in sustaining the craft.
# Quick summary
Step into the Bermondsey studio and visitors see a broad range of objects: baubles, vases, perfume bottles, sculptures and bespoke commissions. The gallery sells across a wide price band. Layton reported that some pieces fetch up to £20,000 while many items are priced at a few hundred pounds.
The studio operates as both a workshop and a commercial gallery. It employs about 20 people, part- or full-time, and Layton says the business is profitable year on year. London Glassblowing's stall at the Collect art fair produced about £100,000 in sales during that week-long event.
Layton calls glass an "ancient medium" that remains under-appreciated in the UK compared with the US and Japan. His studio's financial picture shows the pressures of running material-intensive craft at scale: rent and business rates now touch around £50,000 a year. The burners run continuously, creating both steady costs and carbon emissions.
Born in Prague in 1937, Layton's family fled to England in 1939. He grew up in Bradford, studied and taught ceramics in the 1960s in the United States, then returned to the UK in 1968 as the studio glass movement developed. He founded the studio at a Rotherhithe riverside site in 1976 and later relocated to the Bermondsey site where he still works.
This is a practical example of a craft studio that has scaled to a profitable business while retaining production. It highlights common challenges for material arts businesses: fluctuating overheads, energy choices tied to emissions and costs, dependence on fairs and gallery sales, and the broader institutional environment that supports public engagement and training.
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