Lorraine Glass Industries began operating in Montréal in 1962, becoming part of a distinctive period in Canadian art-glass production. The business was established by Earl Myers, an importer of Czech and Italian glass, rather than by a glassblower founding his own studio. Its factory was located in Griffintown, near the junction of Murray and Wellington streets.

The company brought together glassworkers with Italian experience and people already working within Montréal’s emerging decorative-glass industry. Myers recruited workers from the Venetian glassmaking region, while some employees came from other Canadian glass businesses. This movement of skills helped establish hot-glass production locally and connected Montréal’s factories with a wider international craft tradition.

Lorraine’s output formed part of the Canadian response to Venetian-style decorative glass. Its history overlaps with businesses such as Murano Glass, Chalet and EDAG through the movement of individual workers, but those companies should not be treated as interchangeable names. Similar techniques, colours or sculptural shapes can reflect shared training without proving a particular factory attribution.

Historical research documents glassworker Sabatino De Rosa at Lorraine from 1963 until November 1974, when the business closed. Surviving labels, provenance and documented examples are therefore especially valuable when distinguishing Lorraine’s work from that of its contemporaries. Its place in Canadian glass history rests on this combination of immigrant expertise, local production and the expanding market for decorative glass during the 1960s and early 1970s.

Read more in the Concordia University historical study and the Canadian glasshouse overview.