Wild Geese: Victoria Rothschild, co-owner of Rothschild & Bickers hand-blown glass company, England

Hand-blown glass lighting is a speciality of the glass company co-owned by Vicki Rothschild from Killiney in Dublin.

Rothschild & Bickers, based in England, was established in 2007. Its clients include fashion brand Ted Baker, restaurant chain Nandos, Hilton hotels, Harrods and the Four Seasons hotels. Moving recently into retail, the company now numbers furniture seller Heals among its customers.

Rothschild studied glass at NCAD and the Birmingham International Glass Centre before doing a masters in the Royal College of Art London in 2001. There she Mark Bickers and the two began working on projects together, before establishing Rothschild & Bickers.

Working originally from the London Glass Works, they now lease a warehouse in Hertford, 40 minutes north of the capital. This gives them the space to house one “hot workshop” with a furnace where the glass is blown, a “cold workshop” where the glass light fittings are polished and cut, a workshop for wiring and electrical work and offices. Rothschild & Bickers employ five people including two apprentices and several part-time freelancers.

“Glass is really hard work and people need to be very dedicated and interested in working in glass, so our ‘apprentices’ are both graduates who will hopefully stay for about five years and train up. They assist the glass blowers,” says Rothschild.

Moving out of the city centre meant the business could expand in terms of size and production but also meant an investment of around £70,000 (€88,000) with the acquisition of a 10-year lease on the building, the purchase of a furnace and accompanying equipment and additional staff to cope with increased demand.

Their glass lights are all handblown in the workshop, electrical flexes are sourced from Belfast and their metal fittings are made by a family business in Birmingham.

Strong design

Originally making art glass or table glass (the type of glass item you buy in an art gallery or studio), Rothschild & Bickers gradually began to specialise in lighting. A reputation for strong design, specialised production and the ability to get projects completed on time and to specification has led to many other commercial projects, which form the backbone of the business.

“Myself and Mark were making art glass but really a lot of that production has fallen out of fashion and there is not a market for it anymore because so much nice stuff is being made in eastern Europe and available in Habitat and even Ikea. To make it by hand and sell it at the right price was becoming really impossible.

“We got asked to make lighting for a new shop Ted Baker were opening – they have an interesting design team which tries to source a lot of UK-made product. They started to open more stores and asked us to do different projects for them. It grew organically from there – we did more work for Ted Baker and decided that there was a niche market for lighting for bars and restaurants.”

While 2007 seems to have been a crazy time to establish a business of any kind, Bickers says that: “Weirdly, at the start of the crash, a lot of places closed down but people were taking on new businesses so there was a lot of interior work going on. And the other people who commission bespoke chandeliers for the home aren’t the kind of people affected by the crash anyway.”

Until the move to the new studio, Rothschild was doing a number of part-time jobs including teaching at Central St Martins and the Royal College of Art.

“I ended up having a lot of part-time jobs to pay for coming to the studio. It’s only since we set up this new studio that I have stopped doing them. At one point I think I had four part-time jobs as well as the business,” she laughs.

Expansion

The introduction of retail products has garnered stores such as Heals in the UK, Laine Crawford in Hong Kong and retailers in Singapore as clients.

The next step for the pair is to expand the business, a costly measure, but one which will allow the scaling up of handmade production to cope with demand. This will be what Rothschild calls the “second big leap” for their business and will involve further investment of about £30,000 to £40,000.

“We’ve had a great success with our Pick & Mix range, for commercial use. We’ll bring out new products in September – it’s about bringing out new designs so there is always something new for people to choose from. We work with the designs teams in terms of fittings in the space, electrics and so on,” says Rothschild.

For the foreseeable future, the UK is where it’s at for Rothschild. “It’s booming here at the moment. There are enough people who appreciate spending money on something handmade and there are new cafes and bars opening every week.”

rothschildbickers.com