Decorative glass revival

Cornwall Glass has teamed up with south west kitchen fitters Intrafit to supply detailed sand-blasted glass designs to a high-end kitchen installation.

Installed in the summer, the design features a series of oak trees, sandblasted into the glass cabinet fronts to the customer’s concept design.

These were developed in partnership with Cornwall Glass’s vinyl graphics partner.

Simon Hares, general manager of Cornwall Glass Highbridge (close to Bristol) said: “It’s not a lot of glass but it’s a pretty involved process to get the designs done, apply the vinyl, pick out, and sand blast the designs.

“But we are seeing increasing demand for it, from kitchen and cabinet makers, joiners, IGU manufacturers – there’s a real movement towards decorative glass in retail and that’s something which we’re obviously very well geared up to support here.”

Cornwall Glass launched its in-house interior and exterior, acid-etched decorative float glass range, Opaletch, at the beginning of the summer.

Stored and processed in exactly the same way as ordinary float glass, it can be cut, drilled and toughened as standard, without any special adaptation.

This makes it suitable for a wide variety of applications from splashbacks, shelving and shower screens, to office or home partitioning, balustrading, external glazing and cladding and more.

“Sand blasting is obviously good for smaller runs and bespoke work, acid-etching creates the same satin finish but can be delivered on a bigger scale,” Simon said.

“We have 12 of our own designs in house ready to go but we can also work with customers to create their own screens for bigger runs which can work well for those customers operating in the commercial sector or IGU manufacturers doing greater volume.”

www.cornwallglass.co.uk