Pat Reilly was born in Brighton on 12th November 1931.
He lived through the war years as a schoolboy and was evacuated to Bedmond a little village North of London with his little brother Ken.
For the latter part of the war he went with his parents to Southampton and was educated at Taunton’s Grammar School. After obtaining his General School Certificate; the then equivalent of GCSE; he left school at the age of 16 and served under articles to become a Chartered Accountant.
After qualifying he worked first in Bristol and then in 1960 joined the Dutch multinational company Philips from which he eventually retired in 1991.
During his long career with Philips he moved from pure accountancy into general management and worked for several years as Manager of Overseas Operations for the mobile communications company based in Cambridge. This involved extensive overseas travel and included one assignment which involved living in Canada for a year to manage the Canadian mobile communications company.
Outside of work, in 1975 he became began collecting glass paperweights, was a founder member of the Cambridge Paperweight Circle, (now the Paperweight Collectors Circle), and was invited by Quintet Publishing to write a book on the subject, which was published in 1994
Paperweights
THE COLLECTORS GUIDE TO IDENTIFYING, SELECTING
AND ENJOYING NEW AND ANTIQUE PAPERWEIGHTS
In his later years as a member of a local quiz team he decided to swot up on a specialist subject and chose Greek Mythology. In the course of pursuing that end he has built a comprehensive library on the subject and has read it all, but acknowledges that being human and in his 80s, the memory does not always function as desired.
On the artistic side, he has always had great respect for his brother and is pleased to join him in the research and artistic and photographic projects which culminate in the fine professional quality presentations he has embarked upon.
