1897 — Present
The glazing tradition behind Copa + Glas did not begin in our East London studio. It began in 1897, in the workshops of a company that changed how buildings related to light — a technique later transformed by one of architecture's great visionaries.
In 1897, the Luxfer Prism Company introduced a new approach to architectural glazing. Decorative, multi-paned fireproof windows held together using slim copper sections: a technique as precise as it was beautiful. For the first time, buildings could be designed around the controlled movement of light through structured glass.
Luxfer's manufacturing process was protected by patent in the same year as the company's founding. The method, copper sections holding individual glass panes in precise geometric formations, was both technically innovative and visually refined. It became the foundation upon which an entire tradition of architectural glazing would be built.
The Luxfer technique spread with remarkable speed. From Shanghai to ocean liners crossing the Atlantic, architects and designers specified this glazing method for its structural elegance and its capacity to transform how light moved through built space. A technique born in one workshop became the language of a global architectural movement.
Frank Lloyd Wright saw something in the Luxfer technique that others had not. He understood the copper-section glazing method as an architectural language in its own right, developing entirely new geometric compositions and introducing art glass as a chromatic element. His Prairie Style windows, most notably at the Cheney House, Oak Park, 1903, remain among the most significant examples of the technique ever realised. What had been structural became sublime.
Honouring more than a century of glass innovation, Copa + Glas carries this lineage forward through hand-cut and ground mirrored panes. The original purpose of the glass has shifted: from bringing daylight into buildings, to reflecting, amplifying, and redistributing light within contemporary interiors.
Every piece is made by hand in our East London studio using slim solid copper-sections first used by Luxfer in 1897. The tradition is unchanged. The materials are the same. The intention to create something of lasting beauty and significance has never wavered.