BLOG – 35 YEARS AGO BLOG 12

Glass is often perceived as fragile and as such needs to be treated with care, much like people who make glassware! So, wrapping glass for gifts shares similar reasoning to packing glass to post to customers. The big difference is of course gift wrapping and Glass Creations spent thousands of pounds in the first ten or fifteen years on gift boxes made from gold and silver coloured card. We also bought tissue paper, we had gift tags made, and compliment slips printed. At one stage we offered customers the option of gift wrapping or not. Customers would pay and extra £2 for a nice box but that seemed a complicated process, so we just added the cost of the packaging to the final cost of the product.

Packaging glass for posting required many skills not least sourcing the correct size box. I have spent ages walking around supermarkets pinching boxes. Less time was spent on making the glass items that were being wrapped! In the early days polychips were ideal but of course they are frowned upon now. Bubble wrap is still very useful but for the last ten years I have been using old newspaper. The image of recycling newspapers for packaging seems to find approval with customers so it’s a win, win with an easy route to get rid of surplus newspaper. At times though I do feel it must look as if I am wrapping up fish and chips when people see me place the glass in newspaper and wrap up into a parcel.

Glass Creations has and still does post glass across the World with minimal breakages. One needs to understand the material glass and how it breaks. Glass is strong in compression but weak in tension thus avoid and side knocks. I allow at least two inches of packing around each glass item before being boxed sometimes double boxed. I have seen myself wrap glass up in newspaper, then bubble warp then newspaper then in one box, then wrapped the box in bubble wrap before putting into another box!