House of Waterford

Our first stop on our whirlwind tour of was Waterford on the Southern coast of Ireland. Josh did this for me and really wasn't very jazzed for this visit. This is an excellent tour for people of all ages! It is a very small factory that does speciality pieces and they encourage tour visitors to get up close a personal with their employees. The tour takes you through a brief history of the factory, into the mould room where they use wooden moulds and paddles (they smell really good - like a campfire), then through the blowing department - where you see master blowers at work. Next you go through the quality control department where you see them working on preparing the pieces to head to the cutting department. In the cutting department, you watch master cutters at work. They are insistant that you get as close as possible to see them work. We had one fella have us stand behind him so we could get a better view on how he made all his cuts. It is worth mentioning that all the cuts are made by hand without having any patterns on the glass. There are "guides" on the pieces, but the patterns are memorized and are all done free hand by master cutters using diamond edged drills. It was something to see. Next you move on to the finishing department. This was where Josh lost his little bald mind. Sitting on one table was what appeared to be the 2012 Super Bowl trophy. It was actually a copy of the one they did but it was still really neat to see. On a table across from that, though, was what made Josh's day -the 2012 NCAA trophy. Yes the actual trophy ! Upon seeing it, my husband broke all the rules and picked it up for a picture! The last stop is the showroom where you can purchase items. We "ohhed and awwwed" and left with our pocket books still full, but it was an amazing tour to take.