New Zealand ‘Very Good Market’ For Crystal

Press, Volume CIX, Issue 31976, 1 May 1969, Page 16

New Zealand ‘Very Good Market’ For Crystal

New Zealand was a very good market for crystal, and a market which was growing as standards of living became higher, Mr E. W. Whinyates, the marketing director of Webb Corbett, Ltd, the English crystal manufacturer said in Christchurch last evening. The great and growing demand for fine glassware seemed to suggest that people were seeking more gracious living, Mr Whinyates said. Mr Whinyates is spending three weeks in New Zealand meeting members of the trade. He has already spent five weeks in Australia.

His company had given the New Zealand market priority in the last year, since import restrictions on crystal ended, and on a population basis New Zealanders owned more of his company’s products than the people of any other country, Mr Whinyates said. Tastes in crystal changed, and at present young people were in many cases seeking glassware in the more traditional shapes and styles introduced about 100 years ago. All over the world, the demand for crystal was now so great that the manufacturers could not produce enough to satisfy it. The demand for wine glasses at present was “terrific,” and in the last two years the

demand for “fancy” warebowls, vases, jugs and so on —had been higher than for many years. In New Zealand, the demand was 80 per cent for drinking ware—glasses and decanters—and about 20 per cent for fancy ware.

Crystal differed from ordinary glass because of its lead content, the lead being added in the form of lead oxide to the original “batch” of silica sand and other ingredients. The silica sand could contain only a very small percentage of iron, for iron caused the greenish tinge that could be seen, for instance, in window glass. A top-quality decanter might take three days to pass through the entire process from batch to finished product, although a week would be closer to the average time, Mr Whinyates said. But a considerable amount of the work involved in making a decanter lay in matching the stopper so that it was a precise fit. Each stopper had to be matched to its own particular decanter.