NOTE: REPOSTED. FOR SOME REASON, THE ORIGINAL POST WOULD NOT KEEP THE FONT CODE. I HAD TO DELETE AND AM REPOSTING IT TODAY.
In London on December 8, 1854 William John Blenko was born to a middle class English family. William became interested in glass adornment at an early age, and being encouraged by his mother apprenticed himself to a glass craftsman. He attended school and became a pupil of a philosopher John Tyndall. Early in the 1880s he went into business for himself making what is known as rondels (Round Window Panes), while experimenting with other processes of making glass superior to his competitors.
At the age of 38, he came to New York to experiment with the wonder fuel natural gas. Hearing that this fuel was abundant around Kokomo, IN he went there and started up one of Americas first gas-fueled operations.
The year was 1893, he was producing glass but it would not sell. The American window makers would not accept his products, although it was made by Old World methods. There was a natural prejudice against a domestically made glass. The stained glass studios were European and wanted European glass. This was later known as “The Cleveland Panic”. Discouraged by this he decided to return to England and export the same product he was making in Indiana. He came back to Indiana in 1899, and started a trans-Atlantic shuttle that would end in Milton, WV 23 years later.
He chose the little farm town of Milton because the Industrial Development Dept of the Chesapeake & Ohio Railroad sold him on the idea of Milton as a good place to work. It was a dependable source of sober, industrious labor and natural gas, used in all the glass furnaces, was cheaply priced. In the spring of 1922 William arrived in the small town of Milton, where he soon began unloading the tools of his trade into a small hillside barn. He then went to work building a furnace, with the help of a newly recruited crew of locals. Within a few weeks, glass was being made.
During the depression era William became aware that there would be a need to expand the product line to more than just stained glass. So in 1929, he secured the services of two Swedish Glass Craftsmen. They trained the Blenko crews to craft beautiful pieces of glass by hand. Production increased and in 1930, the company changed from Eureka to Blenko Glass Company, and so came the tableware line of glass products that have made “Blenko” a household word all over the world.
(Photo Courtesy of Big Ashtray.com)
You may wonder why I find this story so fascinating. It is because the little town of Milton, WV was the neighboring town to my hometown I grew up in. My Uncle Charlie lived on a small farm "just around the bend" from Blenko. When we would visit on the weekend, sometimes my Aunt Louise would take us over to the Blenko plant and we would visit the gift shop. You could purchase little bags of glass remnants that were so beautiful. I liked to put them in little vases or bowls in my room. Blenko glass brings back a lot of wonderful memories of going up to visit Uncle Charlie. Every time I see a Blenko product, I am reminded of happy times.
