Qualla: Waterford Crystal

Waterford Crystal: Introduction

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Ticketautomat (talk), CC BY-SA 2.5. Every 31 December in Times Square, a geodesic orb covered in Waterford Crystal drops one foot per second as a million people in the cold count down to midnight. The crystals were cut in Ireland. The brand they bear was almost destroyed in 2009 by a financial collapse no one in Waterford could control, and the workers who made the glass staged a sit-in in their factory that ended up on the BBC. Three hundred miles from Times Square, in a small Irish city on the River Suir, there is still a furnace that melts 750 tonnes of crystal a year.

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Image: Ticketautomat (talk) | CC BY-SA 2.5

Waterford Crystal: The Penrose Brothers, 1783

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Jim Woodward-Nutt, CC BY-SA 2.0. Waterford Crystal began in 1783 when George Penrose and his nephew William Penrose started a business they called the Waterford Glassworks. Their flint glass was extraordinarily fine, and within a few decades the Waterford name had become a marker of luxury in the dining rooms of...

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Image: Jim Woodward-Nutt | CC BY-SA 2.0

Waterford Crystal: The Empire Years

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Susan Serra, CKD from Long Island, USA, CC BY-SA 2.0. By the 1950s the new operation had been taken over by the Irish Glass Bottle company, controlled by Joseph McGrath and the Irish Hospitals Sweepstake's investors. At peak operations Waterford employed 3,000 staff in a city of 46,000 -- one job in every fifteen, in other words. In...

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Image: Susan Serra, CKD from Long Island, USA | CC BY-SA 2.0

Waterford Crystal: The Sit-In

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Eirian Evans, CC BY-SA 2.0. The Great Recession hit Waterford Wedgwood hard. On 5 January 2009 the group went into receivership. On 30 January, the announcement came that the Kilbarry plant on the edge of Waterford was to shut down immediately, despite promises to discuss any closure with the unions first. ...

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Image: Eirian Evans | CC BY-SA 2.0

Waterford Crystal: Apprentice Bowl

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Eirian Evans, CC BY-SA 2.0. A new visitor centre and small manufacturing facility opened on The Mall in central Waterford in June 2010, much closer to where George and William Penrose had begun in 1783. Today the Mall location melts more than 750 tonnes of crystal a year and houses the world's largest colle...

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Image: Eirian Evans | CC BY-SA 2.0