We have a fantastic team of experts who have a passion for glass, recycling and our environment. Our team includes the owner of a Dartmoor farm, master glassmakers, award winning designers, scientific experts, a history, heritage and conservation expert, digital product manager and project administrator. The founder of UGC, Ian Hankey, is a trained gas and furnace engineer, master glassmaker and CAD CAM specialist.
Ian Hankey - Director
Ian is a qualified gas engineer, master glassmaker, award winning designer and CAD CAM specialist with nearly 40 years of experience working with glass. He is passionate about using historical processes and cutting edge technologies to find solutions for today’s environmental problems.
Richard Glass
Award winning designer Richard Glass uses an eclectic mix of traditional and modern techniques to produce highly individual, intricate designs that cannot be made by mass produced manufacturing.
Richard’s studio is set in an historic pottery in Devon
Andrew Bradford
Andrew and his family run Brimpts Farm https://www.brimptsfarm.co.uk/ a prize-winning diversification enterprise.
His Farm nestles in the heart of the Dartmoor National Park in Devon and has been a Duchy of Cornwall tenant farm since 1307.
Katie Shanks
Dr Katie Shanks’s expertise is in designing optics for concentrator photovoltaic applications and includes their development from initial concept to manufacturing and experimental validation. She is currently working on the use of novel materials, such as plastics and biomimicry surface structures, for CPV optics as well as building integrated CPV windows (optics embedded within double glazing).
Sarah Fearn
Dr Sarah Fearn is a Research Officer in the Department of Materials at Imperial College and manages the surface analysis lab. Her area of expertise is Secondary Ion Mass Spectrometry (SIMS), ion beam analysis, and materials science. It was during her first post-doctoral studies at Imperial in conjunction with the V&A, that Sarah was introduced to the fascinating world of ancient glasses, their properties and possibilities! During this research, with the help of Ian Hankey a replica façon de Venise glass was fabricated in order to monitor the changing composition as the glass corroded in ambient air. This work led to several scientific publications, and more recently the supervision of a PhD student in Portugal researching the glass collection of King Ferdinand II of Portugal.
Victoria Oakley ACR FIIC
Victoria Oakley is a conservation professional with 40 years’ experience working in museums, most recently as Head of Objects Conservation Section at the V&A Museum. Her practical expertise lies in the conservation of ceramics, glass, enamels and wax objects, with a particular interest in the chemical deterioration of historic vessel glass. She has written numerous publications on a range of conservation-related topics including two co-authored books on the conservation of ceramics.
Jamie Kaye
Jamie is an experienced digital product manager who acts as a link between business and digital technology. He has assisted organisations in utilizing technology to grow their operations across many industries including education, video games publishers, outdoor events and agricultural societies.