Visit to Blenko Glass

The visit to Blenko Glass was a great day for our glass project group. 

Frit gets melted into the glass

Jason adds spouts to his water bottle

A water bottle blown into an iron mold

Dennis blows molten glass into a mold

We arrived at Blenko at 8:30 and spent several minutes in the gift shop and in the display areas.  Upstairs, we saw some beautiful stained glass and glass art from generations past in the Blenko display cases.  Our guides came and divided our group into two sections.  One group learned how to blow molten glass into a mold to make a water bottle.  Everyone was able to make two water bottles in either ice blue, peacock, turquoise, topaz or crystal.  We were impressed at the beauty of the bottles.  We shaped the molten glass into a sphere then blew a bubble to start making the ball hollow.  We took the molten glass to a stand where we blew it into iron molds to give the glass the shape of a table flask.  The neck of the flask was reheated in a furnace to allow us to shape pour spouts on either side of the flask’s top.  After shaping, we took the flasks to an annealing oven where the flasks cooled from nearly 2000 degrees to room temperature over four hours.

Frit forms patterns in molten glass

The group making the candy dishes had a different but similar experience.  The started with a similar ball of molten glass but rolled it in frit which is crumbles of broken glass to complement the base glass color.  The glass ball with the frit was taken to a furnace and heated to melt the frit into the glass.  Another layer of base glass color was added then rolled in frit again of the same or a different color.  Once again the glass ball was heated to melting.  We shaped the glass to a spherical shape then blew it into a hand carved cherry wood mold to make a hollow vase shaped blank.  Since the glass was thicker and cooler than the flask, this was much more difficult to blow.  This was cut with heavy iron snips to make a bowl shape.  This was heated in a furnace again and once the proper consistency was pressed onto a wire shape to make a bowl with scalloped edges.  Like the flask, the finished candy dish was placed in the annealing oven where it went through a controlled cooling over a four hour period.

Kelly blows a glass candy dish

After lunch on our own, we traded groups so the water bottle group made a candy dish and the morning candy dish group made water bottles.  We were able to take a walking tour of the facility including the sesquicentennial West Virginia vase.  Blenko will produce 150 vases that will sell for $150 and is expected to sell out in minutes when they go on sale June 22.  The vases have been produced for West Virginia Day for many years and are highly valued by collectors.

We were impressed with the work done by the skilled workers at Blenko Glass.  We found that many of the employees have been there for 20-30 years.  Everyone was very pleasant and seemed happy to share information about making Blenko glass.  Although the Blenko staff made glass blowing look easy, we found our firsthand that it is much more difficult than we imagined.

Chris shapes molten glass before blowing into a mold to make a flask

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