A touch of glass: Master engraver aims to keep the sparkle in sport
Greg Sullivan uses a love of sport to promote his unique crystal trophy business, writes Fearghal O’Connor
‘We have a fantastic world renowned glassmaking heritage here in the south-east but it is not protected and I wanted to help in some way to keep that alive’
IT has been a busy start to the year for master engraver Greg Sullivan. He has built a career out of designing and making high-end crystal trophies for a wide range of sporting competitions and other events. Since departing what was once seen as a job for life at Waterford Crystal a decade ago, Sullivan has worked hard to use his talents and skills to make a unique livelihood.
His first job of the new year was to make the trophy for the Phil Mickelson-hosted American Express Golf Classic, as part of a partnership he has with Tipperary Crystal. The large, complex trophy is due in the Coachella Valley, California, by January 20 for what is the first PGA competition of the 2021 calendar.
“Twenty-five years ago when I was a young apprentice with Waterford Crystal I used to do some of the ancillary work for the contract they had for what was then known as the Bob Hope Classic,” said Sullivan. “It is now the American Express Golf Classic and today in my own workshop we are doing the trophy itself.”
Sullivan started an apprenticeship in 1985 as a copper wheel engraver and worked for Waterford for 24 years in total, 19 as an engraver and the last five in customer service. He regularly produced trophies for the PGA, the ATP’s tennis tournaments and for many other world class events, as well as making other limited edition presentation pieces.
“I joined Waterford when it was at its peak. Soon after that though it went through all the different rescue plans,” he said.
As Waterford dealt with its financial troubles in the late 1990s and early 2000s, Sullivan was reluctantly re-deployed to customer service.
“They made great use of me there because I came from a production background and I knew an awful lot about the product.”
By 2009 Sullivan was the UK account manager for John Lewis, Debenhams, House of Fraser, Jasper Conran and John Rocha among others.
But Waterford was changing fast. As part of the deal that saw him move out of production and into customer service he had negotiated to keep his old engraving lathe. So when Waterford went into receivership in 2009, he approached them offering his services as an engraver having built his own workshop at home, focused on the lathe.
“I bought lots of other machinery during the receivership auction to fully equip my workshop,” he said.
For 18 months Sullivan did all of Waterford’s engraving jobs as a freelancer — including The Players Championship trophy in 2011 — until that work ran out. After three decades Sullivan needed a plan for an independent future.
“We had to reinvent ourselves and I developed a masterplan,” he said. “Firstly, we’d chase work under our own brand, Arena Crystal. Secondly, we’d work with other companies as an outsource supplier of engraving. The third strand was to teach engraving.”
Sullivan began working in partnership in 2012 with Tipperary Crystal. He has designed, produced and delivered pieces for national and
international events like World Superbike, Multi One Design’s Krys Ocean Race and the Laya Street Performance World Championship.
“For several years I have supplied US-based on-line retailer Cashs.com with various limited-edition pieces. The Christmas-themed ones featuring Santa are popular and thankfully, they usually sell out. Since 2009 I’ve broadened my skills to now include design, cutting, sculpting in addition to engraving to offer the complete paper-to-podium service.”
Sullivan has branched out whenever possible to find other ways to use his talents. Last September he ran his first copper wheel engraving course, a five-day event with students travelling from the US, the UK and France to study the craft and experience our glass heritage.
Those classes, now online, have become even
more important as an alternative revenue source with the onset of the Covid pandemic.
“We had to cancel the second engraving course last March because of Covid. To circumvent this, we’ve moved the classes on-line using the Zoom platform. It’s not perfect but we have several regular students from across the globe — USA, Australia, Japan and the UK — who attend the fortnightly classes.
“There’s very few places that you can learn this skill and even fewer people that are in a position to teach a lot of it. There are some residential courses in Germany and the UK, but they are very expensive and a huge commitment for people.”
Sullivan says that while the classes are a welcome revenue boost, his motivation is not purely financial.
“We have a fantastic world-renowned glassmaking
heritage here in the south-east but it is not protected and I wanted to help in some way to keep that alive,” he says.
With the classes proving to have incredible reach with students from the US, Asia and Africa, Sullivan also decided to upgrade his web presence in other ways.
“My website was out of date, so I totally revised it in December and added an e-commerce function using Squarespace. I designed and made several new product ranges that include trophies, a gift range and some art-pieces. The trophies featured are sample pieces because we’re all about bespoke design — hence the tag-line ‘made for you’. The gift range is called ‘Rhythm’, the idea being that we have a suitable gift for every occasion, reflecting life’s rhythm. The design features two aligned cuts that trace the path of a heartbeat, one representing the gift giver, the other the recipient. The art pieces are aimed at the collector and corporate markets. I have more pieces in the pipeline to be added to the site, they just take time.”
Now that the golf trophy has been dispatched to California, Sullivan has turned his attention to the annual sporting awards that he began two years ago to honour a range of sports stars that have represented their country.
Sometimes creative and artistic types are not gifted in the art of promotion but Sullivan has come up with a unique way of putting his work in front of a bigger audience.
Two years ago he used his Facebook page to start the Arena Crystal Sports Awards to honour Irish athletes from a wide range of sometimes low-profile sports.
Each January he puts together a well thought out list of 10 Irish athletes who have represented their country and raised the spirit of the nation. This year’s list — which will be announced on Arena Crystal’s Facebook page on Friday — aims to highlight sports people who are not often in the limelight.
Visitors to the page are asked to like and share their favourite, and the winner wins a special handmade crystal trophy worth €2,500, designed and made by Sullivan in his workshop.
Previous winners include Rachael Blackmore (horse-racing), Mona McSharry (swimming), Jack Kennedy (motorsports) and Brian McCormack (road-racing). This year’s list is a blend of unique and talented sports people, some of whom are household names and some who should be.
As part of the awards, Sullivan creates a video of the making of the trophy for his growing global Facebook audience and all he asks of the recipients is that they pose for a photo with their award.
Last year, the competition attracted 65,000 Facebook interactions for Sullivan, twice what it had been the year before. He’s confident that it will be more again this year.
“The trophy is really special and would be the pinnacle of what we do, world championship quality. It is a great way of showing what we are about,” he said.