TYNESIDE folk group The Keelers will perform sea shanties at the National Glass Centre tomorrow night to serenade the new exhibition at the Sunderland venue, Songs of the Sea.

It was inspired by a 19th Century folk song – albeit an Irish one – called The Parting Glass (The Keelers will be giving it an airing).

This sounds like an exhibition to confound any notion that the National Glass Centre is only interested in the material mentioned in its title. For it features a wide range of exhibits of artistic and historic interest.

There are, for instance, the sound recordings of sea shanties made on wax cylinders in the 1920s.

They were sung by retired Sunderland mariners and captured for posterity by American academic James Madison Carpenter on his dictaphone cylinder machine.

Visitors to the exhibition will also see models of ships borrowed from personal and historical collections alongside artefacts retrieved from shipwrecks.

One model, on loan from Sunderland Maritime Heritage Society, recalls the heroism of Jack Crawford who, in 1797, climbed the broken mast of HMS Venerable in the thick of battle to hammer a flag back into position and prevent a mistaken surrender by a British fleet.

This eclectic exhibition also features research into climate change at the University of Sunderland using Royal Navy logbooks from the age of sail and a painting, North Sea Collier, done by former Merchant Navy seaman Robert Ord Page who graduated in fine art at the age of 81.

There are, of course, artefacts in glass, including the razzle-dazzle boats of American artist Richard Marquis who was inspired by World War One maritime camouflage.

Then there’s Italian Luca Pucci’s glass Iceberg, representing the one that sunk the Titanic, and Bottleship, by the German Johanna Keimeyer, a 3D pun on the tradition of putting a ship in a bottle.

Pictured here is the installation The Temple of a Thousand Bells by Brazilian Laura Belém, which features 1,000 blown glass bells and a soundtrack.

This is the first showing of the work since it was commissioned last year by the Liverpool Biennial exhibition, which brings me neatly to the second picture you see here.

It shows an artwork called The Liverpool Map which was made at the National Glass Centre and is now a fixture at the new £72m Museum of Liverpool, which opened yesterday.

Consisting of six huge glass columns, it was created by University of Sunderland senior research fellow Jeffrey Sarmiento and lecturer Inge Panneels.

They won a competition to create the monumental piece during Liverpool’s year as European Capital of Culture in 2008.

Embedded within the packed layers of glass which make up the piece are aspects of the city’s culture and heritage which were submitted by the people of Liverpool.

“I am relieved it is up and it looks extremely close to how we envisaged it,” said Jeffrey.

Songs of the Sea runs in Sunderland until October 30. Admission is free.

David Whetstone