SEBAGO – The nationally-known Jones Museum of Glass and Ceramics is considering a move from its home near the top of Douglas Mountain to a vacant armory in South Portland, a change that would make the museum more accessible to the public.

South Portland City Manager Jeff Jordan said he and Mayor Bill Dale have met with museum officials to talk about a possible move to the Maine Army National Guard Armory in the Mill Creek section.

“They’re going to take it to their board and see if they can raise those kinds of funds,” Jordan said. The Guard has been asking $550,000 for the building.

John Holverson, the museum’s director, would not confirm the negotiations, but said museum trustees are “exploring the limitations of the current site and opportunities to explore other sites.”

Holverson said the museum’s location 25 miles outside Portland means visitors have to know about the museum and really want to get there.

The museum “is better-known to specialists and major museums and collectors than to the public,” he said.

The museum, established in 1978 by Dorothy Lee Jones Ward on property she owns, contains more than 10,000 pieces of glass and ceramic art from around the world, about two-thirds of it in storage.

The pieces include a large collection of paperweights, ceramic plaques and vases, clay pots, American Indian pots, uranium-laden tinted glass, cameo and pate-sur-pate glass vases. There are whisky flasks, salt-and-pepper shakers, high-end Steubens and even low-end kitsch.

Ward, who created the museum from her antiques shop “The Glass Basket,” believed in education and the “stories these objects could tell,” according to Holverson.

That is why she, too, supports a move toward a more accessible museum.

Part of the museum’s mission, Holverson said, is to convince people that “objects made for use and beauty can play as much of a role in your life as ‘works of art.'”

About 12,000 people a year visit the museum, which is open from May to mid-November.