The Cambridge Glass Fair three hundred years of collectable
glass in one day In 1837, the brothers James and John Hartley
established the Wear Glass Works in Sunderland which became well
known for the manufacture of window glass, including crown,
cylinder and Patent Rolled Plate or PRP, a type of mainly
patterned cast glass which was much thinner than that produced
elsewhere. At the Great Exhibition in 1851 Hartley's was awarded
a prize medal for PRP for roofing. Various problems led to the
closure of the firm in 1892. In the same year James Hartley's
grandson, James Hartley Jnr., rented a redundant bottle works in
Monkwearmouth and with a small team of ex-Hartley glassblowers
continued to produce cylinder and crown glass. The name changed
to Hartley Wood & Co. in 1895 when Alfred Wood, the leading
colour mixer from Hartley's, joined as a partner. The firm
prospered in the 1920's due to the demand for memorial windows
after the Great War, and in the period after World War II
because of the wide-spread damage