GIFTS and TABLEWARES: SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2004
LIFE LINES
By John Somerset ______________________________________________________________________
JANE MACKAY: ARTFUL, AND IN GLASS
Jane Mackay entered the world on a bright and sunny day. This may explain her ever cheerful nature and solidly positive attitude. There is a certain gentle confidence about Jane, an attractive trusting nature. Jane is a good example of one who has followed her star through life’s journey – done what most pleased her, confidant that everything would work out. And, for the most part, life has not betrayed this trust.
On May 28th, 1955, when there was no room available, Jane was born in the sun porch of a Vancouver hospital. She is the second of two daughters born to Winifred Irene Helene and Ron Mackay. After supporting her husband while he earned his degree in biology, Helen, as she was called, stayed at home to raise Jane and her sister Margaret Anne. Ron Mackay began his career as a scientist for the Canadian Wildlife Service in Vancouver.
In 1959, Jane’s father accepted a new posting that would take his young family to Edmonton, Alberta. For the next seventeen years, the Mackays would be separated from their extended Vancouver family by the Rocky Mountains. Summers were quite adventurous for the family. Jane’s father would take the family to spend summers in a series of resorts. As a conservation officer, he was responsible for monitoring the local wildlife on remote mountain lakes. Jane and her sister would often go with him, helping to paddle the canoe. Together they counted ducks by species and looked for Trumpeter Swans. In particular Jane recalls the wonders of Lac La Hache, near Hundred Mile House.
Jane attended Edmonton schools, finishing at the University of Alberta, where she studied Recreational Administration. For a girl who excelled in sports and loved the outdoors, this was the perfect choice for Jane. While at university, Jane made her own snowshoes. In fact she was always making things for herself in various mediums: sewing, woodcraft, paper and so on. She had a strong creative skill in anything she would turn her hand to.
When the family returned to Vancouver, after an absence of seventeen years, Jane accepted a position with the Worker’s Compensation Board as a crafts instructor. This was a comfortable and natural position for Jane, enabling her to explore and teach what really interested her. She taught darkroom photography, leatherwork, macramé and such crafts as candle making.
Quite by chance, a man brought some materials to Jane’s class to demonstrate how decorative articles could be created in stained glass. Right away, Jane was intrigued with the colorful and unique art medium. This was 1977, when stained glass was just becoming popular; Jane took to the art and introduced the concept to her courses. The art of creating through glass materials would become paramount in Jane’s areas of creative interests. She would abandon all else to the creative and artistic possibilities of glass.
Two years later, and newly married, Jane bought a small, basic glass kiln, and the first of a continuing series in increasingly complex kilns. While her husband taught school, Jane focused on her new business: making and selling stained glass on a full-time basis. While she was able to sell her creations, business was disappointingly slow. The stained glass trend had become too popular for serious trade crafts people to make an acceptable profit.
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When a local store fixture company closed down, Jane went to investigate what equipment was being put up for sale. The inventory included more than two thousand square feet of flat, mostly clear, colorless glass. Jane submitted an almost laughable low bid of $250.00. To her great surprise, the bid was accepted. Suddenly Jane had to find space in the basement of their home to store the bargain material. She had only just begun experiments with flat glass as an alternative to the difficult stained glass business. Jane knew that flat glass could be heated and formed into some very interesting, and promising, shapes. Working with flat glass and forming it into creative shapes would become Jane’s destiny.
Jane began experimenting with simple, square and rectangular bordered trays intended for serving food. As it turned out, this was an almost unconscious, but an important strategic move, away from purely decorative giftware products toward unique functional art that you could use at the dining room table. It was entirely different from stained glass, a direction with more promise. As owner of Art Glass Design, Jane would pursue this course for the next twenty-five years to the present day.
“I love to learn,” Jane explained as she outlined the various courses she has taken over the years to broaden and perfect her skills. If learning is the arousal and satisfaction of curiosity, Jane is a willing student. She attended an advanced course at the Pilchuck Glass School near Seattle in Washington State in the summer of 1979. Returning home, Jane ordered a technologically advanced kiln and set about driving her company to a more sophisticated level.
She was constantly experimenting with new techniques she had discovered. Successful glass forming is a function of heat and time. “In the early days, I wore a timer around my neck,” she says, “constantly monitoring the kiln. Five minutes could make the difference between success and a kiln load of malformed, useless glass.”
Evelyn Amar well remembers the day in 1982 when she stopped to buy a unique rectangular tray from a vendor in Vancouver’s Granville Market. To her question as to who had made the glass, Evelyn heard the man respond, “My wife.” Intrigued with her find, Evelyn later contacted Jane and placed a small December order for her store. She picked the order up the day Jane came home from the hospital with the elder of her two sons. “The glass sold incredibly well for me,” says Evelyn. The two began a long-lasting relationship with strong personal as well as business interests. Three years later, when Evelyn sold her store, she became the first sales representative for Art Glass Design. Evelyn placed the goods in a selection of finer independent stores in British Columbia, tripling previous annual sales in just three months.
Encouraged by her expanding business, Jane enrolled in yet another course, the New Enterprise Program at Simon Fraser University, where her business plan was given high marks. The assessment: probable success, 85-95%. And so began the movement toward a sole-income family business.
The need for more space and investment in more kilns and equipment led to a move from Vancouver to Maple Ridge, BC, 45 km away in the Fraser Valley. Blessed with a loyal and hard-working staff, the company took route as production rose to meet steadily increasing sales. Jane joined the Circle Craft Co-op, taking part in trade shows. Trade shows exposed Art Glass Design to a broader geographic base. Jane joined the CGTA and hired sales agents to give her company national coverage.
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Mary Gallagher, at the time, owner of the Compleat Kitchen in Toronto’s trendy Yorkville district, found Jane at a trade show. Answering her buyer’s instinctive impulse, Mary committed to a large order, followed by some serious reorders. She was well rewarded, as Art Glass Design products became a major product line in her very fashionable store.
It was breakthroughs such as this that Art Glass Design found market acceptance on a broad scale. In response, Jane added more equipment. Her small basic kiln for stained glass now a fond memory, Jane now oversees fifteen kilns, all controlled by computer. The company Jane created is proudly celebrating its twenty-fifth successful year.
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Nestled against the Coastal Mountains, Maple Ridge is on the north shore of the Fraser River. It is a pleasing place to live and work, to raise a family and enjoy outdoor activities. Jane and her boys have always enjoyed camping in the mountains in the summer. In the winter months, they chase one another over the ski slopes of the region. Traveling, especially to Europe, is another passion that Jane indulges in. Rightfully so, she views this as a reward to herself.
When asked about her proudest moment, Jane thought deeply. With a warm smile and shy twinkle, she recalled a particular time in her first high school year when she won the individual 220, 440, as well as the 440-yard relay track rack race, for her school. It was an accomplishment to delight in. As it happened, there would be many more.
