Obituary: Falmouth glass worker Cliff Miller (From Falmouth Packet)

Obituary: Falmouth glass worker Cliff Miller

12:00pm Friday 15th March 2013 in News By Greg Fountain, Reporter/Photographer

A “quietly spoken man with an excellent sense of humour,” who was well known in Falmouth for the town centre glass workshop he ran during the eighties and nineties, has died.

Glass sculptor Cliff Miller passed away peacefully on March 1, aged 82, following a short battle with leukaemia.

He spent the last months of his life in the Cotswolds with his wife Jenny, where they had lived since the end of summer last year.

Best known for making glass figures in St Georges Arcade, which would draw “quite a large crowd” according to his daughter Katy, Cliff ran a shop in Covent Garden in the 1990's before taking his talents around the world – including stints in South Africa, Dubai, Singapore and a special focus on Hong Kong.

He returned to Falmouth in later years and could be seen at the National Maritime Museum, where he worked as a volunteer.

Katy, who now lives in London, said her father “was very kind and very talented.”

“He was a very, very positive person,” she said, “He had get up and go and got on with things. He was inspirational.”

Andy Wyke, boat collection manager at the maritime museum, remembers Cliff as “a quietly spoken man with an excellent sense of humour,” who worked for many years with the museum’s boat team.

He said: “His skills and patience when carrying out detailed work proved to be invaluable to the restoration and conservation of the museum’s boat collection.

“The team here will miss him very much and our thoughts are with his family at this sad time.”

Cliff leaves behind daughters Katy, aged 36, Louise, aged 34 and wife Jenny, aged 61.

His funeral was held at Oakley Wood Crematorium near Leamington Spa on Wednesday.

Packet readers wishing to make a donation to charity in Cliff’s name, in lieu of flowers, should visit leukemialymphonaresearch.org.uk and click ‘Give’.