Stained glass among best of Blenko creations
Brent Aikman, director of sales and marketing in Blenko Glass' Architectural and Antique Glass Division, shows one of the company's popular styles of sheet glass, often used in windows.
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MILTON -- The quiet strength, beauty and transparency of hand-blown sheet glass has been used for hundreds of years in stained glass windows to tell the Easter story and to visually breathe life into the gospels.
These days, more likely than not, those beautiful, serene scenes are made of glass gathered from the fiery gas furnaces, hand-blown into cylinders and then flattened at Blenko Glass.
Quietly, tucked away on the backside of the Blenko Glass Company is the Architectural/Antique Glass Division that is as vibrant as the company's nearly endless palette of colors.
Although it often has been in the shadow of Blenko's modern-day legacy of artist-designed, colorful and sleek tableware, antique sheet glass was around at the very beginning of Blenko.
In fact, when William J. Blenko first came to the United States in 1893, he had a dream to make the finest hand-blown antique glass in America.
Blenko, who successfully fired up the family's antique glass business in Milton in 1921, becoming the first of its kind in America, would be proud of what is happening today.
In spite of the turbulence of today's market, Blenko Glass remains true to its original purpose.
It is the only company in the United States that produces mouth-blown sheet glass in a production house.
It is also one of only two companies in the United States that makes the one-inch-thick Dalle de Verre glass used in cathedrals and famous buildings around the world.
Over the years, Blenko has produced nearly 1,000 colors of hand-blown sheet glass and has its stained glass in installations at The Harkness Library at Yale, the Pro Football Hall of Fame in Canton, Ohio, the Mormon Temple in Washington, D.C., the Rainbow Room at Rockefeller Center, and in buildings in Saudi Arabia, Japan, British Columbia and Australia.
Run by Don Lemley, who has been at Blenko for more than 20 years, the Architectural/Antique Division is cranking up the publicity and its stock reminding people of the many facets of Blenko Glass.
Fourth-generation president Richard Blenko has been touring the country gaining nationwide exposure on PBS stations running the latest Blenko documentary, "Blenko: The Spirit of American Stained Glass," while at the factory, the Antique Glass Division added Charleston native Brent Aikman a year ago as full-time director of sales and marketing to get Blenko's antique glass out further and stronger.
Aikman, who worked in marketing and electronics in Phoenix for nine years, said with few competitors, Blenko's Antique Division has seen a leap in orders and has upped its current inventory of Blenko Antique sheet glass, its hand-spun rondels (round glass) and its Dalle de Verre to more than half a million dollars worth of glass inventory they are pushing to sell worldwide.
"This company has a balance between its divisions so when tableware is going well, this side tends to take a little backseat and when tableware sales slack off this side really steps up and it balances out the business," Aikman said. "This company was founded on architectural glass so we are going back to the roots of what the Blenkos came here to do."
In really revving up this side of the operation, Blenko has found a lot of other uses for its architectural glass, so much so, that they have added Architectural Glass into the Antiques Division title.
With active recipes for more than 700 colors of architectural glass, Blenko is finding a niche in providing architectural glass such as blocks, bricks, custom pavers and glass that is melted down and re-cast by studio artists around the world.
Last year, Blenko produced 10,000 amber-colored bricks for the Thomas Jefferson Hall Library at The Military Academy at West Point in New York.
Even though some other glass companies such as Corning do make architectural bricks and blocks, Blenko feels it has a place in the market, Aikman said.
"That project made us think there is a real market out there," Aikman said. "We don't want to compete with Corning, they have their own methodology in production and their style of blocks. What we do is produce a block that we can offer in color variances. We have recipes for probably 700-plus colors, and there are probably a lot more than that if you go back and look at all the recipe cards."
Already working with the three main stained glass studios in America (all based in Statesville, N.C.), and many of the top studio glass artists that re-cast its glass, Blenko has now put out its first Architectural/Antique Catalog to studio glass artists and architectural firms throughout the world.
The 2008 catalog went out to 1,000 customers hoping to spread the word of Blenko's unique offerings whether it's the custom circle glass pavers that have been used in sidewalk restorations in Boston, New York and Washington, D.C., or the textured cast panels and cast tiles that have been used in restaurants such as The Mowbray Kitchen in Duxbury, Mass.
Marshall fans might want to stop reading now, but Blenko's largest stained glass project of late is working with Law's Stained Glass Studio, out of Statesville, N.C., where artists are making six-foot-diameter stained glass windows of the flying WV logo for the bell tower windows at the new WVU Alumni Center in Morgantown.
The Alumni Center, set to be dedicated this spring, will be adjacent to WVU's football stadium.
"It is going to be lit from the inside so it is going to be the shot at every night football game," Aikman said. "Every camera at every WVU night game will be trained on it."
Making a wide range of contacts, Aikman said the idea is to get exposure to architectural firms so that they can spec Blenko Glass into a job whether it is in Morgantown or in the Middle East.
Aikman said Blenko is also talking to distributors who would take Blenko Glass to various parts of the world. In fact, they just shipped 35 cases of Dalle de Verre for a show in the Middle East.
"We just started working with a gentleman who does a lot of business in Saudi Arabia and Dubai," Aikman said. "We just shipped him 35 cases that he is taking over there for a show. The impetus is that the sheiks want something different that nobody else has and glass is becoming a big thing over there. That gives us leverage to get glass into markets that we can't necessarily access from the Mountain State."
Unlike the highly competitive tableware side of the business, for stained glass, Blenko only has a handful of competitors.
For sheet glass, competition is a German-based company called Lambert's, and in Dalle de Verre, it is Kokomo Glass in Kokomo, Ind.
Aikman said the companies continue to dwindle.
Blenko has just started getting orders from Europe after a French company making Dalle de Verre went out of business.
Posting its best February in antique glass in about 10 years, Blenko looks to be turning a new corner with its age-old antique glass now being used in so many different ways.
"We will always make glass the same way," said Aikman, of such products as the hand-spun rondels whose process dates back to Medieval Europe. "But we have kind of opened the doors and we've changed the way we do business. It still is going to take a lot of hard work but if we can get into the design studios and the architectural firms and become a known player, we will be well on the way."
Read the article above. The author notes that Blenko glass can be found in many well known structure around the world. Using the list started by the author and any other resource available, locate and post two examples of Blenko design found throughout the world. Be sure to record your resource along with your picture post.
These days, more likely than not, those beautiful, serene scenes are made of glass gathered from the fiery gas furnaces, hand-blown into cylinders and then flattened at Blenko Glass.
Quietly, tucked away on the backside of the Blenko Glass Company is the Architectural/Antique Glass Division that is as vibrant as the company's nearly endless palette of colors.
Although it often has been in the shadow of Blenko's modern-day legacy of artist-designed, colorful and sleek tableware, antique sheet glass was around at the very beginning of Blenko.
In fact, when William J. Blenko first came to the United States in 1893, he had a dream to make the finest hand-blown antique glass in America.
Blenko, who successfully fired up the family's antique glass business in Milton in 1921, becoming the first of its kind in America, would be proud of what is happening today.
In spite of the turbulence of today's market, Blenko Glass remains true to its original purpose.
It is the only company in the United States that produces mouth-blown sheet glass in a production house.
It is also one of only two companies in the United States that makes the one-inch-thick Dalle de Verre glass used in cathedrals and famous buildings around the world.
Over the years, Blenko has produced nearly 1,000 colors of hand-blown sheet glass and has its stained glass in installations at The Harkness Library at Yale, the Pro Football Hall of Fame in Canton, Ohio, the Mormon Temple in Washington, D.C., the Rainbow Room at Rockefeller Center, and in buildings in Saudi Arabia, Japan, British Columbia and Australia.
Run by Don Lemley, who has been at Blenko for more than 20 years, the Architectural/Antique Division is cranking up the publicity and its stock reminding people of the many facets of Blenko Glass.
Fourth-generation president Richard Blenko has been touring the country gaining nationwide exposure on PBS stations running the latest Blenko documentary, "Blenko: The Spirit of American Stained Glass," while at the factory, the Antique Glass Division added Charleston native Brent Aikman a year ago as full-time director of sales and marketing to get Blenko's antique glass out further and stronger.
Aikman, who worked in marketing and electronics in Phoenix for nine years, said with few competitors, Blenko's Antique Division has seen a leap in orders and has upped its current inventory of Blenko Antique sheet glass, its hand-spun rondels (round glass) and its Dalle de Verre to more than half a million dollars worth of glass inventory they are pushing to sell worldwide.
"This company has a balance between its divisions so when tableware is going well, this side tends to take a little backseat and when tableware sales slack off this side really steps up and it balances out the business," Aikman said. "This company was founded on architectural glass so we are going back to the roots of what the Blenkos came here to do."
In really revving up this side of the operation, Blenko has found a lot of other uses for its architectural glass, so much so, that they have added Architectural Glass into the Antiques Division title.
With active recipes for more than 700 colors of architectural glass, Blenko is finding a niche in providing architectural glass such as blocks, bricks, custom pavers and glass that is melted down and re-cast by studio artists around the world.
Last year, Blenko produced 10,000 amber-colored bricks for the Thomas Jefferson Hall Library at The Military Academy at West Point in New York.
Even though some other glass companies such as Corning do make architectural bricks and blocks, Blenko feels it has a place in the market, Aikman said.
"That project made us think there is a real market out there," Aikman said. "We don't want to compete with Corning, they have their own methodology in production and their style of blocks. What we do is produce a block that we can offer in color variances. We have recipes for probably 700-plus colors, and there are probably a lot more than that if you go back and look at all the recipe cards."
Already working with the three main stained glass studios in America (all based in Statesville, N.C.), and many of the top studio glass artists that re-cast its glass, Blenko has now put out its first Architectural/Antique Catalog to studio glass artists and architectural firms throughout the world.
The 2008 catalog went out to 1,000 customers hoping to spread the word of Blenko's unique offerings whether it's the custom circle glass pavers that have been used in sidewalk restorations in Boston, New York and Washington, D.C., or the textured cast panels and cast tiles that have been used in restaurants such as The Mowbray Kitchen in Duxbury, Mass.
Marshall fans might want to stop reading now, but Blenko's largest stained glass project of late is working with Law's Stained Glass Studio, out of Statesville, N.C., where artists are making six-foot-diameter stained glass windows of the flying WV logo for the bell tower windows at the new WVU Alumni Center in Morgantown.
The Alumni Center, set to be dedicated this spring, will be adjacent to WVU's football stadium.
"It is going to be lit from the inside so it is going to be the shot at every night football game," Aikman said. "Every camera at every WVU night game will be trained on it."
Making a wide range of contacts, Aikman said the idea is to get exposure to architectural firms so that they can spec Blenko Glass into a job whether it is in Morgantown or in the Middle East.
Aikman said Blenko is also talking to distributors who would take Blenko Glass to various parts of the world. In fact, they just shipped 35 cases of Dalle de Verre for a show in the Middle East.
"We just started working with a gentleman who does a lot of business in Saudi Arabia and Dubai," Aikman said. "We just shipped him 35 cases that he is taking over there for a show. The impetus is that the sheiks want something different that nobody else has and glass is becoming a big thing over there. That gives us leverage to get glass into markets that we can't necessarily access from the Mountain State."
Unlike the highly competitive tableware side of the business, for stained glass, Blenko only has a handful of competitors.
For sheet glass, competition is a German-based company called Lambert's, and in Dalle de Verre, it is Kokomo Glass in Kokomo, Ind.
Aikman said the companies continue to dwindle.
Blenko has just started getting orders from Europe after a French company making Dalle de Verre went out of business.
Posting its best February in antique glass in about 10 years, Blenko looks to be turning a new corner with its age-old antique glass now being used in so many different ways.
"We will always make glass the same way," said Aikman, of such products as the hand-spun rondels whose process dates back to Medieval Europe. "But we have kind of opened the doors and we've changed the way we do business. It still is going to take a lot of hard work but if we can get into the design studios and the architectural firms and become a known player, we will be well on the way."
Read the article above. The author notes that Blenko glass can be found in many well known structure around the world. Using the list started by the author and any other resource available, locate and post two examples of Blenko design found throughout the world. Be sure to record your resource along with your picture post.
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