The days of apprentices spending years learing a traditional skill are considered long-gone, but one craftsman is determined to pass on his expertise. Nick Morrison reports.

FOR the first few months, just about everything Scott Allen did turned out wrong. It took around six months before even the most basic things worked. It was a couple of years before he could even start on the small bowls and vases.

But seven years on, he is still there. It has been slow and frustrating progress, he ruefully admits, but he has made it so far.

"It was very hard just gathering the glass out of the furnace and it took a few months just to get that right," he says. "I quite enjoyed having a challenge, but there were days I thought it was just sh*t.

"After the first six months I could do the small things - they look simple but they were very hard to get right. You are always learning and doing new things, but now I know I can make something not many other people can make. I stuck it out and it was worth it."

Scott, now 24, has just completed his seven year apprenticeship at Uredale Glass, a glass-blowing business at Masham, north of Ripon in North Yorkshire. But it wasn't his desire to learn how to hand-blow glass that first drew him in, it was more that he wanted a job that would mean he could stay in his home town.

"I knew they were looking for someone and I needed a job so I came up. I hadn't really thought about doing it before, but once I had a go I found it was quite interesting and I stayed," he says.

Uredale Glass was set up by Tim and Maureen Simon, who have been blowing glass for more than 20 years, the majority of them in Masham. Tim had originally gone to art college to study painting, but by his own admission was sidetracked into glass.

His art college, Stourbridge, had links with the glass industry in the Midlands, giving him an opportunity to see the craft at close quarters. "I really fell in love with it in the 60s," he says. "It was the fluidity and the colour, the way light travels through it.

"It is quite a physical job, it is hard work but I love it. When I get old and arthritic I will go back to painting, but I don't ever want to stop doing it."

Tim moved to Masham when he set up a studio with a business partner who lived at nearby Fearby and knew Michael Theakston, scion of the brewing family, who offered them buildings at the rear of the King's Head. When Tim's partner dropped out in 1985, Tim and Maureen bought her out and have been running the business ever since. Next year it will celebrate its 25th birthday.

Between art college and setting up as a glass-blower, Tim worked as a welder, a skill he has put to good use in making most of his own equipment, including rebuilding his furnace this year. He has also started making fused glass, which involves combining separate pieces of glass in the kiln, using equipment bought with grant money given to rural businesses hit by the 2001 foot-and-mouth outbreak. These provided an additional technical challenge, and it was a year before he could produce uncracked fused pieces.

"Glass has a life of its own, it is almost like working in a living material, and that is one of the reasons I love it," he says. "Even in its solid state it is classed as a liquid because it hasn't crystallised, and they say if you look at a glass window that has been there hundreds of years it will be thicker at the bottom than the top because it is still moving.

"I enjoy all aspects of glass, from stained glass through to blown glass, and I'm always looking for new ideas just to keep it interesting. I have always got to be moving forward."

Tim's workshop is next to the studio, giving visitors to the shop a chance to see how glass is blown, from taking the molten glass out of the furnace, adding the colours from a tray of powders and shaping it into the finished object.

"We don't get as many people watching as we used to. I remember doing seven or eight demonstrations a day almost seven days a week," says Tim. "Now, if people haven't seen the real thing they've seen it on television, but we still get them bringing their children to have a look and we get calls from schools asking to come and visit.

"If you are going to blow glass it is very traditional, and on a small scale like this it is very similar to how it was hundreds of years ago. Things haven't changed an awful lot, and the skills would be passed on from father to son in the old days, so it was nice to train Scott."

Scott is the third person Tim has taught. Maureen was the first, and now designs the glass animals and perfume bottles sold in the shop, and Tim's second apprentice went on to set up his own studio in Lancashire.

Working with molten glass means working at high temperatures, and both Tim and Scott have burns on their arms to show for their troubles. The furnace runs at about 1,100 degrees C, although for a new batch of glass it goes up to 1,200 or 1,250 degrees. Once the piece has been made it goes into an annealer, an oven which brings the temperature down at a controlled rate to prevent it from cracking.

The molten glass is taken from the furnace with a gathering iron, and then shaped using a blowing iron, made of stainless steel to reflect and radiate the heat rather than conduct it back up towards the handle. But the risk is still there.

"You are working with very hot material and you do get burned occasionally. Generally, it is not from the glass but on the equipment, when you don't realise it is hot," says Tim. "When we're making glass we'll wear a sock on our right arms.

"It is amazing the amount of heat that comes off a piece, so your arm gets very hot even if you don't get burned. One of the things you have to get used to is going into the oven, and if you take too long over it the iron gets too hot and you can't hold it."

As well as fused glass, Tim is also concentrating more on bespoke glass, producing pieces to designs worked out with customers. Scott has also started producing pieces to his own designs. "It is really satisfying when you see the finished result and you know you designed it in your head, and it has come out the way you wanted it to," he says.

"Being able to use your hands to actually make something, and then seeing it sell in the shops, is very rewarding, and we work fairly well as a team. You know exactly where the other one is going to be so you rarely have accidents, and you learn fairly quickly because it bloody hurts."

* Uredale Glass is off the Market Place, Masham. For details (01765) 689780 or www.uredale.co.uk