"You can't call yourself a glass blower until you have burnt yourself," says Peter, and he should know. Starting out as studio potter, he was teaching ceramics in the USA at the beginning of the studio glass movement back in the early 1960s. He participated in a glass workshop and was hooked.
"We just started experimenting. It was all very haphazard," he says, recounting tales of his terrible burns and escapes from far worse ones. Up to that time, the secrets of glass making were confined to the factory floor. Although the fundamental techniques of glass blowing have not changed for thousands of years, it has taken time for studios glass-makers to rediscover the lost art.
It is difficult to appreciate just how hot and intensely physical it feels simply to observe a glass blowing workshop, let alone practice yourself. London Glassblowing has two glass blowers making up to six pieces a day.
Peter is known for the incredibly vivid colours in his work, creating contemporary pieces with a traditional feel. The colours are built up in layers - one glass blower begins with the base colour, then another heats the next colour and trails it over the base, and so on.