Blenko Glass Company, Inc.

It appears that the Blencow family of Clerkenwell had dabbled in glass blowing from the early 1700s eventually residing in Glass Court, Clerkenwell. So it is not surprising that glass blower, William John Blenko (1854-1933), saw great possibilities of success in America where the puritan traditions of austerity in church architecture were gradually giving away to a tolerance of ornament and beauty in buildings. There was no handmade stained glass industry in North America at the time.

The time was right for William Blenko to ship glass to American stained glass studios. He moved to the United States in 1893 and started a glass making business in Kokomo, Indiana, producing glass for church windows and related uses.

He returned to England in 1904 and then made two more attempts to establish a factory in the United States. He used British glass workers in Point Marion, Pennsylvania, in 1909, and Clarksburg, West Virginia, in 1913, but was unable to make a success of these operations.

In 1921 at the age of 68 he began a new effort in Milton, WV., and was joined by his son, William Henry Blenko, the following year. Seven years later at the height of the depression, William H. Blenko could see the necessity of producing some other product, and secured the services of two experienced Swedish glass workers. This enabled the company to enter a new, wider, and highly promising field of handmade decorative glass. William Blenko died in 1933, but he had lived to see the tide change. The decorative accessories and the beautiful stained glass windows uti lizing Blenko glass are now known all over America. This tradition has been continued by William H. Blenko, Jr., who joined the company in 1946 and his son Richard Deakin Blenko, who joined the firm in 1976.

The factory attracts thousands of visitors every year from all over the United States as well as foreign countries. Here they can watch the molten glass take its final form as Blenko craftsmen practice their skilled art. The Visitor Centre features a Designer's Corner of nine leading stained glass windows and the Blenko Museum of historic glass. Also, there is a "garden of glass", surrounding a three acre lake for visitors to enjoy. Based on information in The BOOK & from http://www.blenkoproject.org/.

Jack Blencowe
Oxford