Shared Experience: Glass-blowers 'Gathering' from the Furnace
Mervyn Peake
Glass-blowers 'Gathering' from the Furnace
watercolour
50.8 x 68.5cm
IWM ART LD 2851
Glass blowers are gathering molten glass as part of the production of cathode ray oscillation tubes. Chance Brothers in Birmingham was the only glass factory in Britain to have developed the technique of blowing this complex shape. The tube was a nineteenth century invention central to the development of television and radar; by 1943, 7,000 tubes were being produced each week. Peake was fascinated by the manufacturing process and by the balletic skills of the workforce.
Paintings
- Corvette Galley
Leonard Brooks - Glass-blowers 'Gathering' from the Furnace
Mervyn Peake - Parachute Riggers
Paraskeva Clark - Sections of buoyancy tank and floating caissons, Sydney graving dock
Herbert McClintock - No 1 projectile shop, (Commonwealth Ordnance Factory, Maribyrnong)
Sybil Craig - Working in the snow, Australian Forestry Unit, Scotland
Sheila Hawkins - Hull Riveting
Frederick B. Taylor - ATS at Work
Rodrigo Moynihan - The Camouflage Workshop, Leamington Spa, 1940
Edwin La Dell - The Merchant Navy: The chain-locker
Henry Carr - Private Roy, Canadian Women's Army Corps
Molly Lamb Bobak - Ruby Loftus screwing a Breech-ring
Dame Laura Knight - The billy boy
William Dobell - Transport driver (Aircraftwoman Florence Miles)
Nora Heysen - Weighing Down The Tail, New Brunswick
Moses Reinblatt - Patients waiting Outside a First Aid Post in a Factory
Ruskin Spear