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Silent Gliss Celebrate 50 years in the UK - a triumph for design and innovation (10/5/2004)

One morning in 1952 in a sleepy Swiss town, Alexander Webber was once again being woken up to the noisy rattle of his daughters' curtain track. Irritated by this rude awakening he designed a 'silent' curtain track. Two years later, this new curtain track from Silent Gliss, combining siliconised aluminium and top grade nylon, was introduced to the UK.

In the last fifty years, there have been an inordinate number of technological advancements that have significantly improved the way we live our lives. Cars have electric seats and windows, CD players, and navigational systems. DVDs and CDs have overtaken videos and cassettes and computers now take the form of palm-tops! What's more incredible is that all improvements and facilitators in how we go about our daily lives, are now simply just taken for granted and used without a second's thought to how we came to have them.

The same is true for those fortunate enough to have discovered Silent Gliss, who are celebrating their fiftieth anniversary in the UK in 2004. Silent Gliss is a company that has made the lives of those in the know significantly easier. Techniques and technology originally developed by Swiss engineer Alexander Weber, Silent Gliss (a name taken from the French verb glisser, meaning to glide) have spent the last 50 years revolutionising the way curtains and blinds work. Company marketing manager Sam Shervill explains: "We developed the first 'silent' curtain track, we then designed tracks that could be bent to accommodate bay windows; we were the first to electrically operate curtains via push-button control; and the first to modify the roller blind with a decelerator action to allow the blind to travel up as smoothly as it comes down. This revolutionised the use of roller blinds and gave customers reliable quality for the first time."

Yet amongst all the company's pioneering innovation and technological advancement of the last half century is one important constant - Silent Gliss, fifty years after first opening their curtains on UK soil, have kept their position as the top developer of curtain hardware and blinds in the country. "We are," explains Sam Shervill, "a British manufacturing success story - perhaps because we have always seen the value and importance of good design. We like to bring people together to create a certain synergy that produce creative designs with great style and keep us ahead of the game." And it shows. From refurbishments at Windsor Castle to the first-floor cafˇ in the Eiffel Tower, from the Eden Project in Cornwall to the two miles of curtain track it installed in the Arabian Tower Hotel in Dubai, the Silent Gliss are always called upon for challenging projects, where only the best, most innovative window treatments will do.

"We have," say Sam Shervill, "come a long way. Throughout our history, we have aimed to be at the top of the pyramid. This means we function at the luxury end of the market, providing a high-quality product and constant new innovations." This is what Silent Gliss have been doing, continuously, in the UK for the last fifty years.

As homes and offices become design statements, Silent Gliss UK will be busy developing new concepts and styles to remain at the forefront of the industry. So what does the next 50 years hold? Shervill says "More automated window treatments at home and in the office, more sophisticated fabrics to control light and heat, and just as importantly, much more style!" Whatever the future holds, you get the feeling Silent Gliss will be there leading the way.

www.silentgliss.co.uk