Blenko - The People

Blenko Glass Company - William Blenko
The first Monday of each month, this Blog will focus on a Blenko employee, retiree, or designer.

Today we'll talk about BLENKO GLASS's founder Mr. William Blenko. The company's name comes from William Blenko, a British glassman who shipped glass to American stained glass studios. He came 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 1922 at the age of 68 he began a new effort in Milton, WV., and was joined by his son William H. Blenko, the following year. Seven years later at the height of the depression William H. Blenko could see he 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 1934, but he lived to see the tide change. Mr. Blenko's spirit of "working hard for success and refusing to give up" lead to success. The decorative accessories and beautiful stained glass windows utilitzing Blenko glass are now known all over America.
Our next featured employee will be Don Lemley who currently heads the Antique Glass Department at Blenko, Mr. Lemley is also an accomplished glass artist, he teaches at Blenko and occasionally at Taylor Book Store in Charleston, W. Va.
Blenko Glass Company is located in Milton, West Virginia off I-64, stop by to visit and purchase the wonderful handcrafted glass.

This information was taken from Blenko Glass literature and THE BLENKO PROJECT website.