World of Glass

In the early 1990s, Pilkingtons undertook the £1 million restoration of the Grade II*-listed Pilkington's Jubilee Cone building, a brick cone structure built in 1887 to house the first ever continuous glass making furnace. Following the restoration, Pilkingtons floated the idea of utilising now redundant adjacent factory space (known locally as "The Hotties") as a museum for its historic glass collection. With subsequent interest from the Borough Council looking for somewhere to host their collection of local historical artefacts, the centre was funded through a National Heritage Lottery Fund contribution of £8,385,000 and European support in the form of Objective One and RECHAR II grants…

Since 2008 the World of Glass has been home to one of four chandeliers, restored by David Malik & Son, which originally hung in the main hall of Manchester Airport. With 1,300 clear, smoked grey and amethyst lead glass droplets, individually blown by master craftsman Bruno Zanetti and weighing two tons, each chandelier was commissioned at a cost of £3,000 in the 1960s but would now cost more than £250,000.