The story of Tyrone Crystal
Tyrone Crystal was founded in 1971 by Father Austin Eustace, a parish priest who wanted to create work in a part of County Tyrone that had little of it. Nobody locally knew how to make crystal, so an advert was placed in a national newspaper for someone to train the workforce. Two Austrians — a master blower and a master cutter — were hiking across England, read it, and came over to teach the skill from scratch.
Over the following decades the firm grew into one of Ireland's best-known names in hand-cut crystal. Its makers produced the largest chandelier in Ireland, designed by Marcus Notley for the Great Room of the Merchant Hotel in Belfast — 4.5 metres tall, 2.9 metres across and weighing some 400kg.
The Dungannon factory closed on 12 March 2010 with the loss of 31 jobs, and the craft looked set to leave the area for good. In 2018 a group made up mostly of former employees formed the Dungannon Crystal Regeneration Group, determined to hold on to the skills and heritage of hand-crafted glass.
They reopened in April 2021 under the new name Tyrone Crafted Glass, in a unit on the Coalisland Road. Today the makers keep the trade alive, pass it on to visitors at the bench, and preserve the original story in a small on-site museum of donated Tyrone Crystal pieces, wooden moulds and cutting tools.