• FREE FORMED
• EDWARD KING
• October 7 - November 4
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EDWARD KING CV

Edward has been working professionally with hot glass for more than 45 years. As a 15-year-old, he began an apprenticeship at Whitefriars Glass Works in London, where his father worked in the Glass House. A year later, his natural aptitude with the medium was recognised and he had progressed to being an assistant with different teams of glassmakers, including the legendary Ronnie Wilkinson, Harry Dyer and Freddie Daden. At just 17, he was promoted to gaffer, heading his own five-man blowing team making tumblers designed by Geoffrey Baxter.

After five years at Whitefriars, Edward accepted a position at Artistic Glass, in Wisbech, Cambridgeshire, and six months later moved to Wedgwood Glass in King’s Lynn, Norfolk, to work under the designer Ronald Stennett Wilson. Here he was a gaffer in charge of a team making stems and feet for wine glasses, later moving on to making animals and paperweights as well as blowing large-scale objects. During his 17 years in King’s Lynn, the factory partly merged with Dartington Crystal and later became Caithness Crystal.

In 1987, Paul Miller, a glassmaker who had left Wedgwood some years earlier to set up Langham Glass in Holt, Norfolk, with Ronald Stennett Wilson, invited Edward to head up a second glassmaking studio at the Bygone Village in Fleggburgh, near Great Yarmouth, Norfolk. Two years later, Langham left the Bygone Village and Adam Aaronson moved his studio there and this was how Edward and Adam first met and started working together.

However, Edward was then approached by Edinburgh Crystal and offered the role of production manager and moved to Edinburgh where he stayed for 10 years. By this time, Adam had moved back to London and when Edinburgh Crystal closed down in 2000, Edward came to work at Aaronson Noon, where he has been ever since as Adam’s gaffer and righthand man.