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| Type | Private |
|---|---|
| Industry | Glassware |
| Founded | 1921 |
| Founder | William J. Blenko |
| Headquarters | Milton, West Virginia , United States |
| Website | www |
Blenko Glass Company, located in Milton, West Virginia, makes hand-blown glass.
| | |
| Type | Private |
|---|---|
| Industry | Glassware |
| Founded | 1921 |
| Founder | William J. Blenko |
| Headquarters | Milton, West Virginia , United States |
| Website | www |
Blenko Glass Company, located in Milton, West Virginia, makes hand-blown glass.
William J. Blenko was born in London, England in 1853. He worked in a glass factory in his youth. In 1893, he emigrated to Kokomo, Indiana, in the US, where he established the first American factory to produce sheet glass for stained glass windows. In 1903, he was forced to close his factory and return to England as a result of an economic downturn.
His second business venture was in 1909, in Point Marion, Pennsylvania. This endeavor quickly failed, as did a third, in Clarksburg, West Virginia. At that time, Blenko found work at other established Ohio and West Virginia glass companies and purportedly received a job offer from Louis Comfort Tiffany.[ citation needed ]
In 1921, Blenko started another sheet glass company, this time in Milton, West Virginia because of low natural gas prices, a major concern for glass manufacturers of the time, which drew many prospective glassblowers to the area. His new company was initially named Eureka Glass Company, later changed the name to Blenko. Until the arrival of his son, William H. Blenko, in 1923, he had no employees; he made and sold all of the glass himself.
Soon after the onset of the Great Depression, which severely damaged the stained glass market, Blenko began to produce stemware and tableware, after finding two expert glassblowers to work for the company in 1930. However, this did not mean the end of Blenko’s stained glass industry. Blenko Glass Company still produces hand-blown sheet glass for use in stained glass windows, as well as architectural glass.
Blenko's early work include providing glass for the stained glass windows of St. Patrick's Cathedral in New York City. Prior to 1946, Blenko's tableware output was largely functional and classical in form. [1] Macy's started to sell Blenko products in 1932. [2] The White House has a collection of Blenko table ware, which is used periodically. [3]
In 1980, the Blenko Glass Company started a yearly tradition to produce limited-edition glass bowls celebrating West Virginia's founding birthday. [2]
In 2005, a court judgement ordered the company to pay $500,000 to its gas supplier Big Two Mile, which precipitated Blenko's financial troubles. In 2009, the company announced it was shutting down production. 20 of its 50 employees had already been laid off. [4] The Blenko Glass Company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in May 2011. [5] In August 2012 Blenko Vice President Katie Trippe announced that Blenko Glass was reopening after filing for bankruptcy protection. [6] A reorganization plan was accepted by the court in December 2012, clearing the way for the company to exit bankruptcy in early 2013. [7] [8] The company exited bankruptcy in 2013 and continued to produce art glass for the consumer market. Despite increased fuel costs, a short period of inactivity, and a rapidly changing industry and marketplace, the company continued to produce glass art ware. On August 3, 2015, the eighth annual festival of glass was held in Milton, West Virginia. [9]
As of 2020 Blenko no longer produces architectural sheet glass.
The Blenko Glass Company is housed in a multi-building facility including the Visitor's Center, office building and manufacturing, shipping and warehouse facilities. The Visitor's Center's first floor contains items available for sale including "seconds", while the upper floor contains a small display of Blenko's historical work, primarily early pieces from the 1930s and some experimental pieces and most notably includes a gallery of stained-glass windows made with Blenko sheet glass by different artisans.
Attached to the Visitor's Center is an observation area, allowing visitors to watch as the glass is blown. Beside the center is a “garden of glass”, installed by Joel Myers, on the shore of a small, man-made lake bordering the factory, strewn with colorful glass shards which border a small trail that winds around part of the factory. Myers' early work included a series of glass hands missing a finger after he, himself lost a finger in Blenko's workshop.
The factory contains eight furnaces that run continuously. [2]
The Blenko Museum opened in 2000. Aside from curating year-long exhibitions of the company's work, the Blenko Museum worked with the Corning Museum of Glass in 2005 to include Blenko in a small survey exhibition organized by Tina Oldknow, Curator of Modern Glass, titled “Decades in Glass: the ‘50s” featuring Wayne Husted's designs. [10]
Louis Comfort Tiffany was an American artist and designer who worked in the decorative arts and is best known for his work in stained glass. He is associated with the art nouveau and aesthetic art movements.
Stained glass is coloured glass as a material or works created from it. Throughout its thousand-year history, the term has been applied almost exclusively to the windows of churches and other significant religious buildings. Although traditionally made in flat panels and used as windows, the creations of modern stained glass artists also include three-dimensional structures and sculpture. Modern vernacular usage has often extended the term "stained glass" to include domestic lead light and objets d'art created from foil glasswork exemplified in the famous lamps of Louis Comfort Tiffany.
Glassblowing is a glassforming technique that involves inflating molten glass into a bubble with the aid of a blowpipe. A person who blows glass is called a glassblower, glassmith, or gaffer. A lampworker manipulates glass with the use of a torch on a smaller scale, such as in producing precision laboratory glassware out of borosilicate glass.
Studio glass is the modern use of glass as an artistic medium to produce sculptures or three-dimensional artworks. The glass objects created are intended to make a sculptural or decorative statement. Though usage varies, the term is properly restricted to glass made as art in small workshops, typically with the personal involvement of the artist who designed the piece. This is in contrast to art glass, made by craftsmen in factories, and glass art, covering the whole range of glass with artistic interest made throughout history. Both art glass and studio glass originate in the 19th century, and the terms compare with studio pottery and art pottery, but in glass the term "studio glass" is mostly used for work made in the period beginning in the 1960s with a major revival in interest in artistic glassmaking.
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Favrile glass is a type of iridescent art glass developed by Louis Comfort Tiffany. He patented this process in 1894 and first produced the glass for manufacture in 1896 in Queens, New York. It differs from most iridescent glasses because the color is ingrained in the glass itself, as well as having distinctive coloring. Tiffany won a grand prize at the 1900 Paris Exposition for his Favrile glass.
Hardman & Co., otherwise John Hardman Trading Co., Ltd., founded 1838, began manufacturing stained glass in 1844 and became one of the world's leading manufacturers of stained glass and ecclesiastical fittings. The business closed in 2008.
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Tiffany glass refers to the many and varied types of glass developed and produced from 1878 to 1933 at the Tiffany Studios in New York City, by Louis Comfort Tiffany and a team of other designers, including Clara Driscoll, Agnes F. Northrop, and Frederick Wilson.
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Glass art refers to individual works of art that are substantially or wholly made of glass. It ranges in size from monumental works and installation pieces to wall hangings and windows, to works of art made in studios and factories, including glass jewelry and tableware.
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Seneca Glass Company was a glass manufacturer that began in Fostoria, Ohio, in 1891. At one time it was the largest manufacturer of blown tumblers in the United States. The company was also known for its high-quality lead (crystal) stemware, which was hand-made for nearly a century. Customers included Eleanor Roosevelt and Lyndon B. Johnson, and retailers such as Marshall Field and Company, Neiman Marcus, and Tiffany's.
Pairpoint Glass Company is an American glass manufacturer based in Sagamore, Massachusetts. It is currently the oldest operating glass company in the United States.
Indiana Glass Company was an American company that manufactured pressed, blown and hand-molded glassware and tableware for almost 100 years. Predecessors to the company began operations in Dunkirk, Indiana, in 1896 and 1904, when East Central Indiana experienced the Indiana gas boom. The company started in 1907, when a group of investors led by Frank W. Merry formed a company to buy the Dunkirk glass plant that belonged to the bankrupt National Glass Company. National Glass was a trust for glass tableware that originally owned 19 glass factories including the plant in Dunkirk. National Glass went bankrupt in 1907, and its assets were sold in late 1908.
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Mambourg Glass Company was a window glass manufacturer that began production on October 26, 1887. The company was the first of thirteen glass manufacturers located in Fostoria, Ohio, in the United States, during northwest Ohio's gas boom. The plant was managed by Leopold Mambourg, a Belgian immigrant and experienced glassmaker. Much of the company's work force was also from Belgium. Former Ohio governor Charles Foster was president of the company and a major financial backer. He was also a major investor in other businesses and two additional Fostoria window glass companies: the Calcine Glass Company and the Crocker Glass Company. Mambourg was the chief operating officer for all three of Foster's window glass companies.
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