A METAL and glass vine climbing the side of the Red House Glass Cone has undergone a move and revamp this month to commemorate 100 years of women’s suffrage.

The original buddleia vine was created by Bromsgrove artist and jeweller Michele Gulliver for the 2006 International Festival of Glass. It featured a glass and metal vine, complete with flowers and leaves climbing one wall of the cone.

To commemorate the jubilee in 2012, Dudley Council enabled Michele to add further vines, flowers and leaves and topped it all off with a crown, emerging from the new growth.

She worked with two of the cone’s resident artists, glass lampworker and beadmaker Sarah Cordingley and fused glass artist Jane Ellis to make new glass inserts for the flowers and glass jewels for the crown.

Local blacksmith Bob Colley, who co-designed and installed the cone’s popular glass curtains artwork worked with Michele to install the new vine and crown.

This new revision has seen the flowers and roundels placed on a new wall with new pieces being added in the suffragette colours of purple, white and green provided by glass artist Charlotte Hughes Martin of Glass Quarter Designs who is based in studio 14 at the Cone.

Councillor Patrick Harley, leader of Dudley Council, said: “The jewelled buddleia has become a popular sight at the cone since its installation in 2006.

“This will be the second time Michelle has returned to the site to update her artwork, and it’s fitting that she’s chosen the colours of women’s suffrage in this, the 100th year of women gaining the right to vote.”

The Red House Glass Cone, located in High Street, Wordsley, is open for free from 10am to 3pm Monday to Friday and 11am to 4pm at the weekends, hosting regular children’s activities, pre bookable glass engraving and free glass blowing demonstrations.