Nova Scotian Crystal has found a way to profit by tapping into an ancient skill set.

by Tom Mason

The red, iridescent glow of the open furnace cuts through the dark, dusty factory like a laser beam. Fragments of glass crunch underfoot with each step. The men — dirty, sweating, focused on their task — speak loudly to each other over the noise of diamond drills, grinders and saws, their voices tinged in heavily accented Irish. These are the crystal makers of Waterford. Over the last century their practiced craft has made their city on the southeast coast of Ireland a household name with crystal collectors around the world. But the tourists who squint and peer through the open door of the factory are not in Ireland, but in Halifax, Nova Scotia. The building is an old converted fish market on the Halifax harbourfront; the business is NovaScotian Crystal, the only mouth-blown, hand-cut crystal maker in North America.

The Irish accents are authentic, though. By the early 1980s, hand crystal making was a dying art in Ireland. Automation was taking over the business, leaving the craftsmen of Waterford agonizing over the death of their craft. In 1993 Denis Ryan, expatriate Irish businessman and cofounder of the 1970s Irish folk revival band Ryan’s Fancy, sat down for an ale with Philip Walsh, one of those out-of-work craftsmen. It didn’t take long for Ryan to fall under Walsh’s spell. Why couldn’t the best Waterford glassmakers be enticed to Canada, Ryan reasoned, where they could teach their craft to a new generation of Canadians? A business was born that night. Eight craftsmen, including Walsh, eventually signed up to make the trip to Halifax.

In addition to Ireland, much of the world’s best handmade crystal comes from northern Italy and the Bohemian region of the Czech Republic. Today, more and more of it is found only in the form of rare antiques. After World War II, the demand for fine crystal soared, but the product quickly fell victim to its own popularity. With Waterford Crystal alone receiving orders for as many as 50 million pieces a year by the 1980’s, there simply weren’t enough skilled crystal makers on the planet to keep up with demand. To fill the orders, most of the major factories switched to automation while farming out what was left of their handmade business to low wage countries like India. Most consumers didn’t even notice. Like the liquour that goes into it, handmade crystal is an acquired taste. For the uninformed, the bubbles, lines and varying thicknesses of stemware and bowls are imperfections and flaws; to crystal collectors they are known as “features” – the very thing that makes crystal collectable in the first place. The machine process that spits out glass after perfect glass imparts a sameness that most true crystal aficionados find tedious and boring. Machine made crystal is just a reproduction of the real thing,” scoffs master crystal-maker Jack Tebay. Tebay started his apprenticeship in the factories of Waterford when he was just 15. He and his son, also a master crystal-maker, immigrated to Canada six years ago to set up shop at NovaScotian Crystal. Like a wise professor, Tebay spends most of his working day now patiently teaching the new crop of young, Canadian-born apprentices.

There are no books, no computer databases where the craft of the crystal makers is stored. It passes organically from brain to brain as it has for centuries. Once the chain is broken the business is as extinct as the passenger pigeon. That’s why NovaScotian Crystal is so important, says Tebay. The small factory is a tenuous sanctuary where the craft can survive for another generation. The men who keep the craft alive are the artisan equivalent of a Tiger Woods or a Greg Norman — their gentle, practiced breaths and steady hands the crystal-maker’s version of a 30 foot putt. They are the concert pianists, the olympic athletes of their craft. “Philip Walsh was one of the four or five top stem-makers in Waterford,” says Tebay. “My son Brian is also very good.” His modesty won’t allow him to pass judgement on himself.

Like precious gems, color, clarity and cut are all clues to the value of crystal, but there’ one sure way to spot the best. Call it the “ping test.” Like a well-cast bronze bell, fine lead crystal will produce a distinctive tone when flicked gently with a fingernail. The tone is an indication of lead content — the higher the lead content, the clearer, higher and longer the tone. By contrast, the sound of poor quality crystal is low, muddy, and short – right down to a “thud” in the worst cases.

The crystal making process starts by combining two substances that couldn’t be more different — glass and lead. To be called crystal, glass must contain at least 14 percent lead. Twenty-four percent is the maximum for machine-made crystal; any more and the molten mixture is too soft for the machines to work. NovaScotian Crystal has 33 percent lead (rare, antique Bohemian crystal can contain as much as 60 percent). The lead increases the refraction of the glass, making the light dance and sparkle with that distinctive crystal sheen.

To make hand-made crystal, an orange powdery mixture of sand, litharge and potassium carbonate is heated overnight to a temperature of 1420 degrees C; at 5:00 a.m., a bleary-eyed apprentice lowers the oven temperature to 1290 degrees so the glass can be worked. At 8:00 a.m. the blower dips his pipe into the molten goop, and with just his eye and his touch to guide him takes out exactly the right amount to make a bowl, a goblet, a salt cellar or a crystal lamp base (NovaScotian Crystal makes over 400 different production pieces). He shapes the inside of the red-hot piece with measured breath, while spinning and shaping the outside in a handheld wooden mold. He has about a minute and a half to form it in precisely the right shape and thickness — any longer and the molasses-like mixture becomes too cool to work with. The variability of the process creates the features – tiny grains of unmelted sand embedded in the glass, small air bubbles, thin lines called cords created when globs of crystal at two different temperatures fuse together in the pot. The goal is always to strive for zero features, but like a perfect game in baseball, it is a rare occurrence. “I can see differences in every single glass we produce,” says Tebay. “The general public couldn’t tell the difference, though.”

Those minute differences are exactly what crystal collectors around the world are clamouring for. The company has about 5,000 customers registered in their database so far, collectors who include Cuban dictator Fidel Castro and Princess Caroline of Monaco. Aline Chretien received a set of NovaScotian Crystal stemware as a gift — she reputedly like it so much she purchased a similar set for Hillary Clinton. The company ships regularly to the United States, Japan and Israel — and yes, even Ireland. Tebay is most proud of that.

Lead is only half the reason for crystal’s sparkle. Like the facets of a fine diamond, the cut also plays an integral role. Today, the majority of mass produced crystal is left uncut, but at NovaScotian Crystal the art is alive and well. Once the crystal piece had been shaped, slowly cooled and hardened the cutter carefully etches out each delicate pattern with a set of diamond grinders. Except for a marker-drawn grid that serves as a guide, the pattern is cut freehand from memory. The quality of the cut can make or break a piece of hand-made crystal.

NovaScotian Crystal has created four signature patterns of stemware to date. The straight, strong cuts of Citadel mimic the walls of Halifax’s most familiar landmark while the curved lines of Margaree are a stylized tip-of-the-hat to the Acadian, Celtic and Mi’kmaq cultures that founded Cape Breton Island. The classic heavy cut of Titanic is modeled after an actual crystal light sconce from the doomed ship. The ultramodern vine motif of Annapolis is the most recent addition. Other patterns — Barrington, Avondale, Evangeline, Argyle — are available as vases, wine coolers, honey jars and other items, but not in stemware. All are original patterns designed by Tebay, Walsh and the other crystal-makers.

But the limited editions and one-off custom pieces really get the serious crystal collector’s blood racing. A 1000 copy limited edition single malt Scotch glass sold out almost immediately last year; NovaScotian Crystal is working on a new limited edition design. The company also does a big business designing high priced crystal trophies and one-of-a-kind gift items — popular with corporations shopping for the CEO who has everything. Not that NovaScotian Crystal expects their product to be sealed permanently in a glass case. Fine crystal is meant to be used, and the crystal makers put a lot of though into the functionally of the product. In the 1970s the German crystal maker Riedel started a revolution in the industry by designing a series of wine glasses, each designed to enhance the flavor of a particular wine. NovaScotian Crystal has followed that tradition, claiming to be the first cut crystal producer to do so. Their single malt Scotch glass is a case in point. Over the last few years, NovaScotian Crystal’s designers have studied the journey a swig of Scotch makes from the bottom of a glass to the back of the throat the way an aerospace engineer studies the flight of an airplane. The bowl of the glass starts out large to provide surface area and then narrows in to concentrate the liquid when it hits the mouth. As an added touch, the lip of the glass is flared to keep the backside from hitting the drinker’s nose. The result is a shot of Scotch that lands perfectly in the middle of the tongue to deliver maximum flavour. Most recently, Walsh and Tebay sat down with wine tasters and wine growers at British Columbia’s Mission Hill Family Estate to produce Canada’s first official ice wine glass — a true coast-to-coast effort.

Tebay doesn’t need to say much to the apprentices any more — constant repetition is their main teacher now. With his skills safely passed on he is close to fulfilling the last duty of a master crystal maker, and thinking more and more of retirement. He’s proud of his young apprentices and feels the traditions of the Irish crystal makers will be safe in their hands. In a decade, some will be masters themselves — but the fine touch, feel and keen judgment they’ll need can’t be taught. They are natural gifts that must be honed and developed, according to Tebay. “It’s like ice hockey or golf. If you want to be up there with the big boys, you’ve got to have natural talent.”