NEARLY 40 years ago, Hugh Forsyth Molinari set up his glazier's business in Glasgow. "Modest" didn't even begin to describe it.
NEARLY 40 years ago, Hugh Forsyth Molinari set up his glazier's business in Glasgow. "Modest" didn't even begin to describe it.
It was a half-shop on Bain Street in the East End, shared with a wallpaper merchant.
Doors Open Day highlightsDOORS OPEN DAY BUS Journey through seven centuries of Glasgow's architectural history on the City Sightseeing bus. The £2 guided tour departs every hour on the hour and you can hop on and off at designated stops.
BRITANNIA PANOPTICON MUSIC HALL Celebrating its 150th birthday this year, the historic music hall hosts on a range of shows, singalongs and exhibitions.
CASTLEMILK STABLES The cover star of this year's Doors Open Day is the refurbished B-listed Georgian stable block of the former Castlemilk House. There will be tours of the building, visits from historic figures and apple pressing.
GLASGOW CIVIL CEREMONY SUITES James Boucher's grand 1872 building was refitted by Salmon and Gillespie in the Glasgow version of Art Nouveau, known as the Spook School'. l 22 Park Circus, Sun 1-4pm. Glasgow Sheriff Court Guided tours take visitors around one of Europe's busiest courts, built in 1986.
HOUSE FOR AN ART LOVER Take advantage of free entry to visit Charles Rennie Mackintosh's exquisite design for an architectural competition - finally realised in 1996.
MACKINTOSH CHURCH Another of Mackintosh's designs - this time dating from 1896-9 - has recently enjoyed a refurb.
PLATFORM Gareth Hoskins's award-winning arts centre at the heart of Easterhouse's Bridge complex.
ROYAL SCOTTISH ACADEMY OF MUSIC AND DRAMA Once home to stars such as David Tennant, left, James McAvoy and Robert Carlyle, visit the academy's practice rooms and performance spaces.
STV STUDIOS Peek behind the scenes of your local TV station in its new riverside HQ. Guided tours bookable on doorsopenday@stv.tv
THE TOBACCO MERCHANT'S HOUSE Find out more about the Merchant City's last remaining Tobacco Lord's house and its connection with slavery.
|
But Hugh persevered ... and has since seen his business grow to encompass a 15,000sq ft purpose-built unit a stone's throw from his humble beginnings.
"I make the tea now," chuckles Hugh, 77, who has handed control of Forsyth Glazing to three sons, Paul, Joe and Gerry.
The firm's order book has grown from replacing broken panes in city tenements to specialising in decorative bespoke glass for customers across Scotland.
And Hugh's tea-making skills might just be glimpsed by members of the public - alongside the workmanship of the Tobago Street factory - at this year's Doors Open Day.
The factory is opening its doors to the public on Saturday and Sunday (September 15 and 16) to open a window on a business that has become a landmark in the east end.
It's one of the more unusual inclusions in the 18th annual open weekend organised by the Glasgow Building Preservation Trust.
The programme will see more than 120 buildings open their doors to the public this weekend.
Beyond the gleaming glass of Forsyth's showroom lies the beating heart of the business that's normally out of bounds to the public. It's where 3m x 2m panes of glass are cut, polished, bevelled, sandblasted, leaded and painted to order for trade and private customers.
"It's completely changed from being totally manual to being all machines," says Hugh, who lives in King's Park with wife May. "I didn't do these decorative things - these brilliant cut designs - I was just a pure glazier."
It was Hugh's mother - a hawker in the Barras - who was having glass cut for a picture frame in C&W Summers and asked if Hugh might like to earn his trade as a glazier. The 14-year-old left school for a five-year apprenticeship before National Service in Buxton, Derbyshire, detonating bombs for the RAF.
He rejoined the firm in 1951, and remembers a time when glass wasn't quite as plentiful as it is today.
"It was a scarcity and like everything else it was rationed," says Hugh, whose father was a janitor in St Alphonsus Primary School for 36 years.
"If a shop window was broken, then you would board it all up and leave a small square for glass in the middle so people could still look in."
Hugh went on to set up his own business at 37, and gradually increased his floorspace and business size, starting out in Bain Street, then progressively bigger shops in three different London Road sites.
The purpose-built factory and showroom at Tobago Street opened two years ago.
The Doors Open Day tour will take the public on a tour of the plant, taking in thousands of doors imported from Indonesia, to the main guts of the factory where glass is formed into decorative panels for doors, windows and mirrored wardrobes.
Massive sheets of glass arrive weekly and a machine with a steel carbide wheel cuts these to within 0.5mm accuracy.
Factory staff labour busily at each of the decorative stations - feeding glass into the automatic processes such as brilliant cutting, bevelling, polishing and washing. Although elements such as sandblasting, painting and creating the double glazing units remain labour intensive, don't they miss the artistic work now carried out by machines?
"You couldn't do this by hand," says Joe Molinari, the middle of the three brothers running the business. "The machines have opened things up so much more in terms of the intricate designs we can do." No further explanation is required as, nearing the end of our tour, worker Craig Lawson unveils a special Evening Times mirror created by lifting our logo from the website and running it through their computer-aided design application.
It's a process that even has Hugh baffled. "It's incredible that these machines do what they do."
- Forsyth Glazing, 30 Tobago Street. Tours are on Saturday and Sunday at 10.30am, 11.30am, 12.30pm, 1.30pm, 2.30pm & 3.30pm. Call in advance on 0141 554 0011.
