Blenko Glass Company

Employee Spotlight - Connie James For our employee spotlight this week, we have none other than Ms. Connie James. Connie started working at Blenko in 1981, and after a short year and a half hiatus, came back full-time to work as a dedicated employee for 41 years. In her time, she has worn as many hats as we could throw at her, with experience and time given to every possible position in the office. However, she found her home in our Wholesale branch as the Wholesale and Office Administrator. If ever you had a question about LITERALLY anything about Blenko or the history of our company, you could head straight to Ms. Connie’s desk to find the answer. She recently retired (and by recent, we mean yesterday) and has left an impossible-to-fill hole in both the office and the lifeblood of Blenko Glass Company. To know Ms. Connie is to love her, and we are so appreciative of every single precious second that she dedicated to this company.

Employee Spotlight: Cathie Sprouse Cathie - that’s C-A-T-H-I-E - joined our Customer Service team in early August and thanks to her extensive CS experience, she was answering phones like a veteran by the end of her first day. Production delays caused a spike in customer contacts and Cathie was instrumental in helping our small CS team catch up. She’s a force to be reckoned with and has energy enviable by people half her age. And while she always speaks her mind, her wit and good humor ensure she only leaves smiling faces in her wake.

?? Celebrate National Apprenticeship Week with Blenko! ?? Our talented apprentices bring passion and creativity to mastering the art of hand-blown glass, carrying on over a century of Blenko tradition. ???We’re Hiring for 2025!??? Join our apprenticeship program to learn from master artisans and become part of a timeless legacy. Apply today at https://lnkd.in/ejwvxZzV #NAW2024 #DecadeOfNAW #ApprenticeshipUSA

Employee Spotlight - Braiden Meadows Braiden Meadows joined us at the very beginning of 2024, and has been a diligent and excited apprentice ever since. Our apprenticeship programs put our novice glassblowers through a series of departments, training, and roles so that we cultivate well-rounded glassworkers who understand all of the moving parts that make a manufacturing factory run. Braiden’s done his shift in Shipping and has been cycling through his nightwatchman shift at present. What we love is that Braiden respectfully takes every opportunity he can to practice and get his hands on the glass. He’s been asking the Creative Director what tricks and techniques we want him to learn – going home and finding everything he can on the technique – and then spending his lunch hour munching and practicing. He’s a student of our catalogs, too, and he’s currently super excited by Joel Philip Meyers' designs – so if you’ve picked up a lunchtime piece in the Visitors Center lately with a tall, thin, slender neck and flat lip – that’s a Meyers by Meadows experiment. What Braiden exemplifies for us is the excitement and the artistry that goes into each our handmade products – and that all of this depends on folks like Braiden honing their craft and bringing it into the shop. All of the glass is made by all of us – and that’s a really special thing when all the parts move as joyfully as Braiden does.

One of the historic glass products we once made were hand-blown stained glass cylinders that we scored, flattened, and sold as sheet glass for architects and hobbyists. The process was exhausting - and occupied an entire second shift, generally – and also took three long passes through annealers. It’s not something we do anymore - precisely so that we can stay focused on what it is we do best, which is make sophisticated tableware in a range of bright colors.

Check out our day trip itineraries to and from our historic factory in Milton, WV! https://lnkd.in/gPgv5bBQ

Employee Spotlight - James McDonald Now that Daniel Chapman has retired, our longest-serving employee is James McDonald. Of course, Daniel literally only had one day of service on James - who we also call Mickey, or Chico. Mickey’s done all sorts of things around our factory in his forty-six years of service to Blenko, but he started in Shipping in 1978, wrapping up our bulk wholesale orders in pine fluff, brown butcher paper, and boxing it up. These days, one of the critical, and thankless, things that Mickey does is tend to our workers – human and cat alike. Mickey’s got a quiet routine first thing in the morning: he gathers up the clean sports drink tub every morning and fills it up for our hot shop to stay quenched and cooled – and then, the endless and thankless task of cleaning up after our cats. (Someone’s got to do it, and we’re so thankful he does.) Mickey’s a knowledgeable anchor in our cold shop now, where he and Mike Stratton work amiably side-by-side every day, and they put the level on our products, polish lips, marry stoppers, and keep the glass moving from the hot shop to shipping, and out the door to your house. It’s the people that make Blenko, and it’s the people’s hands that make it handmade. All our glass is made from scratch in our Milton, West Virginia factory every day – all the way through from sand to hand. Sophisticated design, impeccable color, undeniable legacy!

Ash has been with us since July 2023, and has become an integral part of the Blenko puzzle from the jump. She stepped up and into Tours, and evolving and slaying them. She is our finest shepherdess, mic’d up and crisply articulate, smiling and ready to answer your questions. Ash is our hostess with the mostest, which is why we recently promoted her to Event and Tours Coordinator! In her new position, she’s already stepped up to the plate to organize the company picnic, our blow-your-own classes, and a whole host of cool ideas coming down the pipeline! She also has the tricky job of organizing and scheduling our Mobile Glassblowing Unit, and she’s been a cool captain riding the waves of our newest enterprise. We love her for her enthusiasm and her terrific stewardship of our brand and our story. She’s a consummately engaging storyteller, and an indefatigable motor behind the scenes. Raise a glass to the queen of our calendrical comms: to Ash! ??

Employee Spotlight - Ron Robinson, Jr Lil Ron is the batch-master, the color-meister, the maestro of melting glass. He’s been with us for just shy of thirty years, and it runs in the family - we call him Lil Ron because his dad, Big Ron, worked for us for decades, too. We rely on Ron for all of the hard work that gets us from sand to glass – so he weighs, measures, mixes, batches, and loads the furnaces with our rich glass colors all week long. We’re celebrating Lil Ron right now because WOW has he delivered the color this year! Without Ron, there’d have been no Malachite, Ganymede, Absinthe, Cerulean, Butternut, Heliotrope… In a year of so many furnace deaths, he’d have had his hands full staying on top of that; but to bring us so many incredibly memorable colors in one year? Wow! We wanted to capture Ron in his portrait the way so many of us in the factory know Ron – a blur behind the scenes, moving from one furnace to another, checking temps, making adjustments. His nickname in the factory is ‘Gopher’ because there’s no telling where he’ll turn up next.

What a year it has been for our furnaces – it’s like every appliance in your house dying in the same year. ?? But! We worked our #6 furnace hard for the course of its life, and we had to lay it to rest this week. In recent years, it’s given us Olive, Malachite, and Cobalt glass, anchoring us in cool colors in Shop One’s corner of the factory floor. The good news? We’ve had a great year thanks to your enthusiasm and passion for our handmade products. This has allowed us to queue up its replacement immediately: it’s literally on its way! And each one of these furnace deaths is balanced by a furnace birth – and so we’ve stayed on top of the wave and we’re riding it out!