Matt Reed runs one of the largest Facebook groups for Glass Artists, at the time of writing it has 14,320 members. I thought that it would be a good idea to find out a little more about the Group and the man himself.

Caroline Channing is primarily a stained glass artist, who is now expanding her range into fused glass jewellery and mixed media sculptural pieces. In this interview Caroline shares some of her recent pieces of work and tells us how her successful business all began with a course of evening classes.

Mechanical devices have always interested me. Being born in the late thirties, when I was a teenager in the early fifties, cars and motorcycles were cheap and sufficiently simple mechanically that one could perform repairs without needing expensive equipment. At age 30, 1968, I was working as a heavy equipment mechanic

Ever since I’ve been young I’ve always been compelled to find out how the things around me worked. I would take things apart, anything I could get my hands on and hopefully put it back together. I remember when I was 10 and my parents found me in my room with a new toy helicopter in pieces all over the floor - and me with a screwdriver in hand.

I’d like to tell my story and hopefully help inspire others to develop previously unknown skills and abilities and keep the world of mechanical timekeeping well and truly alive and ticking.

I am a qualified architect and industrial designer. My final project for the masters program in industrial design was related to time. I spent countless hours pouring over the wonderful books on horology in the institute library researching my project. I think that is where my love for mechanical timekeeping was born. Later I discovered ebay and English fusee watches. With no one to fix them here I learnt how to do it myself.

I have always been fascinated by the concept of time. We know almost nothing about it, we do not know if it even exists. It is obviously not the 'fourth dimension' as it is so often called. Time. We can not measure it, we can not travel through it, we can not exert any control over it. All we can do is record its passing, with ever greater accuracy.

My High School Science teacher was a watch collector and thought I'd be a good candidate for an apprenticeship opening at R.L.Christie in Edinburgh where he had his watches maintained. I took the opportunity and served a 5 year apprenticeship as a watch and clock maker.

My interest in clocks and watches began when I was very young, maybe 7-8? I used to stand next to my father who repaired the watches of various work colleagues. He would generally do this on a Sunday morning and then would go into Birmingham the following Saturday morning for any parts he required.

It's been 25 years since I first started working with clocks as a profession. Prior to that it was a hobby and a passion. A few cuckoos and Korean junk in the early days rather quickly made me realise I had better look into going with my interest in old English work sooner than later.