The Glassblower, Mervyn Peake

The Glassblower 1944 Mervyn Peake 1911-1968 Peake is best known as author of Gormenghast. In the Second World War he was commissioned by the War Artists Advisory Committee to record the making of cathode ray tubes for radar. These were made at the specialist glass factory of Chance Brothers, Smethwick, Birmingham. Peake also wrote a poem called The Glassblowers inspired by the sights of the factory: There is a molten language that is glass Unborn, a poetry of barbarous birth; It sings in sand and roars in furnace-fire; The blowers breathe it voiceless, as they pass through brimstone halls and girdered aisles of ire.'