A piece of glass carelessly thrown away will remain for about 4,000 years. In view of this fact, the initiative by the Mauritius Glass Gallery to recycle glass in order to obtain useful creations appears like a ?must?. We can only wonder why there aren?t more such initiatives not only for glass but also for plastic (a plastic tumbler takes one hundred to one thousand years to disintegrate), paper and so on?

?Waste will survive us?. This motto sets the tone! What strikes you as soon as you step into the museum-workshop is that the Mauritius Glass Gallery wants to make people aware of the environment. Thanks to little ?exhibitions? done with the collaboration of the ministry of Environment, the Mauritius Wildlife Foundation and the Mauritius Marine Conservation Society, the company intends to show the damage caused to the environment by our everyday negligence.

As a subsidiary of Phoenix Camp Minerals, it is not too hard to guess where their glass comes from. On the one hand, the parent company has found a way to dispose of its unwanted bottles and, on the other, this activity brings back money to the company. ?Hotels also return most of their bottles to us.?

The workers? gift

As soon as you leave the workshop-museum, you will discover the beautiful objects made by the craftsmen (see inset). The products in the shop are the result of the powers of creativity of every worker. It seems that the workers have a gift: that of transforming old and spoilt bottles into beautiful and useful objects.

Creativity is another very important aspect of the Mauritius Glass Gallery. Lamps, glasses, bottles, decorative objects, paperweights, plates? so many useful objects for the house can be found in the small shop near the workshop. ?Not only do we try always to be innovative, creating new types of glass for instance, but also each object ? even if they are supposed to be the same model ? will be different. As all our products are 100% hand-made, it is just not possible for any two of them to be identical. And this is precisely what our foreign customers like here!?

Tourists indeed constitute an important part of the shop?s clientele. ?They like to have something which they are sure is made in Mauritius? People from Germany or Italy often come here and buy a souvenir although they have glass galleries in their own countries. They just want something original, different from what they can get at home and made by the people of the country they have been visiting!?

Clive Siranda says he is happy to see that a growing number of Mauritians are aware of the environment. The number of Mauritians coming to visit the place must be a proof of this growing awareness. ?It is easier to influence the younger generation so we make it our duty to organise guided tours for schools at every opportunity!?

The power of glass-blowers

?You have to really like this job to do it well?? Glass-blowing is far from being an easy task but this manual work continues to charm every generation according to the workers at the Mauritius Glass Gallery. Working next to an oven heated at more than 1,000° C must certainly not be that easy. Glass is placed in this big oven and transformed into a more or less malleable lump. Then it is either blown or moulded by hand into the required shape; for this, the worker simply uses a damp piece of newspaper. His experience and dexterity help him. He remains very serious and concentration is needed so as to avoid burning himself or a colleague.

But all the difficulties are forgotten in the moment of pride when he sees his completed work of art!