Deacons Glass is a family run studio situated the ancient market town of Crieff, Scotland. The town has a long history of art glass manufacturing starting over 50 years ago in 1964 with Strathearn Glass, followed by Perthshire paperweights in 1968, J Glass in 1978 and finally Deacons Glass in 1980 and John Deacons had been involved with all of them!

John started as an apprentice with Strathearn Glass in 1967 but within a year was asked by the manager Stuart Drysdale to join his Perthshire Paperweights start-up team. It was here that John gained a thorough grounding in all aspects of running a glass studio. After 10 years at Perthshire Paperweights, John felt the need to get out of the factory environment so that he could express himself, have the freedom to experiment and to take his ideas into paperweight designs. After a long search, he found suitable premises and a year later left Perthshire Paperweights to set up his own studio about 1 mile away from Perthshire paperweights. He called the studio J Glass after the 'J' cane found in some antique Bohemian paperweights that were a great source of inspiration for John.

Allan Scott, the lampworker, joined John shortly afterward and together they explored what could be achieved in paperweights. J Glass was highly successful and expanded rapidly until the economic crash in 1980 which forced its closure. However John was not to be defeated and within 6 months he had converted the cow byre attached to his house into a small studio, built a furnace, glory hole, reused the kiln salvaged from J Glass and was back in business. This time however, he vowed never to have employees and to keep overheads to an absolute minimum, a strategy that John has never wavered from. In fact, today, he still uses the kiln that came from J glass!

This strategy means that Deacons Glass has always been noted for providing value for money products as well as being able to meet special customer requirements at short notice. Being a small studio, and not driven by long production runs of a particular design, means that innovation is the key. John is always happy to make paperweights to a customer's own design and over the years many hundreds of different designs have been made. Whilst paperweights have been and will remain the main output, John and Craig enjoy experimenting with other art glass products such as lamps, bowls and other containers.

At an early age John's son Craig showed an interest in glass and he was soon helping his father in the studio. Once he had left school, Craig joined his father full time and is now responsible for many aspects of the business. John's wife Ann, makes the patterns/moulds, so it's a close knit family business.

As to the future, Craig's daughter Erica is already setting up millefiori weights so the outlook for Deacons Glass looks set for the long term.