At Nailsea in Somerset, as you pass in the train from Bristol to Weston-super-Mare, you can still see few creeper-covered stumps of buildings on the site of the famous glassworks, which once employed several hundred men.

Nowadays “Nailsea” is a legend, and the word has come to be applied to several different kinds of fancy or coloured glass which were made at other places besides Nailsea, and often long after the factory closed.

First there are all those bottles, jugs, rolling pins, decanters, cups and mugs which are made of dark bottle glass with coloured flecks. Sometimes these flecks are white, sometimes they are in other colours like red, yellow, and pale blue. (more…)