Blenko Glass Company

Hank Murta Adams discusses the dissolution of the handmade industry in the Ohio Valley. Oral history interview with Hank Murta Adams by Barb Elam, conducted via telephone, June 7, 2019, Bard Graduate Center. Clip length: 01:36.

Hank Murta Adams: So I went from there, sort of by accident, to grad school, and didn’t do glass in grad school, but when I got out of grad school—and while I was an undergrad—it was really the beginning of the definite dissolution of the handmade glass industry in the Ohio Valley, and there were hundreds of these factories; and most of them had already sort of passed out, but there still were probably, I’m gonna guess—25, 20? But they were being sold off, auctioned off. The molds were being sent to scrap yards, and I’m a young kid and I’m just like, observing this, and I was younger than all those people I told you about—like Howard [Ben Tré], they’re all two to four years or maybe more older than me—but they were all my buddies and my friends and—so I’m of that second generation, but I’m younger. But I’m definitely out of that ilk. And so it was very interesting to sort of see, and as I’ve said in my lectures, my entire adult life has, sort of, seen the disintegration of hand-worked industrial revolution coming to a full closure, and the last gasps of it. And Blenko was very, very special within that.

Hank Murta Adams discusses Blenko in relation to other factories. Oral history interview with Hank Murta Adams by Barb Elam, conducted via telephone, June 7, 2019, Bard Graduate Center. Clip length: 00:35.

Hank Murta Adams: But yeah, I mean, the thing that really struck me about being living and working there—cause I would live down there, they had a little house for me—I was really struck by, you know—here’s—which is the way I viewed glass my whole life—is, ‘Okay. Here’s this myopia—here’s this focus. But what does that tell you about the periphery?’ I realized that this is just one factory telling a story because it’s still going, and it had some notoriety, but there were so many factories like that.

Hank Murta Adams recalls Bill Blenko inviting him to design for the company. Oral history interview with Hank Murta Adams by Barb Elam, conducted via telephone, June 7, 2019, Bard Graduate Center. Clip length: 03:32.

Hank Murta Adams: And—I want to tell you, going into this plant was—it was just amazing. It was quite large, it was a very old—sort of a butler building was the main factory, and they had about 15 furnaces; some were anywhere from—at that time, they have smaller ones now, but at that time they had anywhere from two to, say, five tons were the furnaces. And those were ‘monkey pots,’ to what we would call ‘day tanks,’ which were the larger—the clear tanks were the larger tanks. So going in there and having—you know, I think there were at least, I’d say 90 people on the floor, all working. There’s nothing like that in this country at all, ever, again—handwork like that. So it was real—and it was just jaw-dropping, to go in there and watch that. And Blenko, they never really made a lot of money. They did have the most successful line, I think it was in—that I produced for them, was their record sales—were in, I believe, ‘93 or ‘94. And I worked real—you know, and I—we’re going back to how I got in there with Don [Shepherd], I started to use that oven and I started to cast all my own work there. I had unlimited use of the color. So I did that, and I was casting there, I can’t remember how many times; and then Bill Blenko—it was fairly soon though, Don had announced—Don Shepherd—had announced that he was leaving to them, and he never asked me if I wanted the job because he knew I was an artist, and, like, why would I want to do this. And he didn’t ask me. And then Bill Blenko called me, I was up in New York, and said, ‘Would you want to design for us?’ and I said ‘No, Bill. I’m not interested,’ and I let it go. And then he called me again in two weeks—and he said, ‘Please, would you please consider this?’ And so I thought to myself, ‘Well, how hard can it be to design glassware—I mean it’s all a history of shapes,’ and so I said, ‘Okay, I’ll do it,’ and I was thinking to myself, I knew I would get a carte blanche use of the place, but I really was not interested in designing for them. And so I agreed to do it, it was at half year point, and I said, ‘Well don’t expect much from the first year—the way the design year works.’ Even that is completely turned on its head now and doesn’t happen, not just in the glass world, but in the entire design world operated in that cycle of what happened at Blenko. And it was a—completely another culture to a kid that was a fine arts major and that [laughs] went to school for painting. And it was just like, my naivety, and my interest, and my curiosity was the blessing because I was just—I’m not going to say I wasn’t judgmental, or I wasn’t critical of things, but I kept my mouth shut and I was a student, and I was learning, and I was humbled every step of the way by these people that worked there were astoundingly hardworking. And so I was sort of self-interested, by getting my work done there and I did cast my work and I don’t know how I did it when they’d review because to do investment castings, which were called ‘unique molds,’ single shot, you lose it, you lose it, there’s no other molds—no record, my pieces would anneal for six weeks. They’re life size or larger, twice life-size, and I would make those molds in New York, I would truck them all the way down to West Virginia. I’d arrive at three in the morning, usually unload them myself, and get them into the oven so that I could cast them within three days and then be gone. And that’s what I did before I was officially designer.

Hanks Adams discusses being a designer for Blenko. Oral history interview with Hank Murta Adams by Barb Elam, conducted via telephone, June 7, 2019, Bard Graduate Center. Clip length: 01:54.

Hank Murta Adams: I was the seventh designer for Blenko, and the really interesting thing to me is that there was always this respect, and this sort of aura of, quote, ‘the designer.’ There was only one designer at a time, I was the seventh, and there was a complete respect for the job and the person doing that, although they would tease the hell out of you and run you through the ringer and—but Blenko—it’s a very fascinating—and it’s actually taught me a lot in my career in non-profit and in teaching. They gave, kind of, quite a liberty to us, and as with me. And I wasn’t disdainful of it, just like, ‘Well, how hard could it be to do this? You do these shapes, and give them to the teams to make, and then they do them.’ Well, I soon realized that I had 140 families that I was responsible for their livelihood and for the company, and the longer that I was there, the more that I just sort of observed this incredible piece of history. I took it more and more seriously, and more in earnest, and yet the company was falling apart. It had no money. It was a very bizarre situation. But as I cared for the men, and as I engaged with the men—and this is when I stopped blowing glass. I started to phase the casting, but I really stopped blowing glass there because I wasn’t going to get into a competition with these dudes cause I [laughs] wasn’t that orthodox a glassblower, and it was like, ‘This isn’t my job. I’m here’—and so it became more European, which is very different than Joel Myers, and very different from some of the others; closer to Winslow Anderson, and closer to a few of the others that were not actually hands-on. But the trick with me was that I had blown glass for 10 years so they couldn’t get anything by me.

Hank Murta Adams describes how Blenko objects were produced. Oral history interview with Hank Murta Adams by Barb Elam, conducted via telephone, June 7, 2019, Bard Graduate Center. Clip length: 01:52.

Hank Murta Adams: You know, it’s such a small company, and there are people that should—there’s a guy named Dave Osburn who sort of became one of the lead gaffers there. The systems were so interesting and unique at Blenko; there would be two benches that would run production of a particular item, and the startups would be the blowers and they would have their team on one bench, and then there would be the finishers, and they would be—you have another team. So the piece would be started and if there were any color additions or bits that need to be—or dips need to be made on the start of the piece before it went into the mold, then it would be the blowers; and then it would be handed off to the team that were the finishers, and they would do the the lip wrap, and the opening up, and the finishing of the piece. Now, I don’t know if that was the way it was with all factories, but that’s certainly the way it was at Blenko, and when I landed there I know there were 140 people employed. As to how many—I think there were nine; nine teams on the floor as I remember, but, I might be wrong about that, but—and I can give you some names, but Bill Blenko—I think has passed, I’m not sure, I think he’s passed, but—and I can [laughs] tell you a lot about sort of the backstory of the company through the eighties and nineties and the aughts.

Hank Murta Adams discusses the work environment at Blenko. Oral history interview with Hank Murta Adams by Barb Elam, conducted via telephone, June 7, 2019, Bard Graduate Center. Clip length: 01:58.

Hank Murta Adams: I mean it was really hard labor; they would start at six in the morning, and it was really intensely difficult work with—there was a guy who was the foreman named ‘Jarfly’ and he was there most of my tenure, he left while I was there. But he was there most of the time, and Jarfly was the bull that ran the entire studio, and everybody kissed Jarfly’s ass and Jarfly was a hard-ass, and Jarfly was also very loving to the guys. It was very interesting to watch him. And so I had to engage with all these different levels, and I had basically had to win these guys over. And when I first started at Blenko I took over from Don [Shepherd]. Basically, I would come in, I would make molds, we would prototype when I’d get up with them early in the morning, at six in the morning I’d start; and we would start prototyping and running samples and molds and work ideas out—test out—very hard work, intensely hard for me because I had to teach them, I had to show them new things, I had to coax them. And I came there and they—when I first started, I asked them to put a lip wrap on something, they’d spit at my feet. And I just—you know, it’s like, I took it, and—so it didn’t take more than six months before they realized that I cared about them and I was intensely caring about the product and the work, and so through my criticism—and boy, [laughs] I did criticize them, but they loved me for it, because they weren’t getting anything. And so I’d come in from New York, on my trips, and first thing I’d do is I’d go to the lehr—the moving lehr—the work would be coming off the belt, and I would look at all of the pieces that had been recently designed, on production, and accepted into the line, and they’d be horribly off. And I would put them on a cart and I’d tell the lehr boy to take these and go chuck them in the pond. Well, that certainly caused a sensation.

Flo Perkins discusses getting her glass from O. J. Gabbert. Oral history interview with Flo Perkins by Barb Elam, conducted via telephone, August 20, 2019, Bard Graduate Center. Clip length: 00:45.

Flo Perkins: So where did I get my glass? I use his [Dick Marquis’s] contact, which was O. J. Gabbert in West Virginia and Mr. Gabbert had been in the glass business his whole life and what he did was collect the cullet from the different factories, and I don’t think there were too many. And it came in cardboard barrels, and each one weighed, I don’t know, 300 pounds, 500 pounds? And so the glass came in these cardboard barrels with the ring that unsnaps, and you had to—I had to use a tractor with the front end loader that they—the semi-truck would show up with a ton of glass and we’d, like, unload them into the front end loader and get that over to my shop and put it down.

Randall Grubb describes providing the University of Southern California with high-quality glass from Correia. Oral history interview with Randall Grubb by Barb Elam, conducted via telephone, January 24, 2020, Bard Graduate Center. Clip length: 02:16.

Randall Grubb: I was forbidden to pick up a blowpipe at work, but one of my jobs at night often was to change the color in the color tank. So you got to shovel out a hundred pounds of cobalt blue, shovel it into a bucket full of water, turn it into cullet, throw it away, and then refill the furnace with green glass, ‘cause tomorrow we want to have green. No problem. ‘Hey Steve, this hundred pounds of blue cobalt that I just dug out of here, how’d you like to donate it to USC glassblowing program?’ ‘Sure, that’d be great. Go ahead. Take it.’ ‘Great.’ So I loaded in my truck, and I take it over to USC [University of Southern California], where I had three furnaces of my own that I had built, and I had a full glassblowing facility virtually of my own, because I had built it for USC. USC is a business school. It always struggled to get the minimum number of glassblowers to run the program. There would never be more than 10 or 15 people in a class. So here again, the fact that I’m living on campus, living in a fraternity near campus and could ride my bike over—hell, I lived at the glassblowing studio, blowing glass day and night. You know, I’d ride back to the fraternity house all sweaty after—at 10 o’clock at night to join the fraternity party, because Randy had been at the glassblowing studio all evening, blowing glass. So it was—it was the most unbelievable situation. Here, they’ve, they forbid me to blow glass at work, but yet they’re giving me the beautiful, soft, blowable glass that we’re melting at Correia [Correia Art Glass, Santa Monica, California]. A special formula that’s made for glassblowing, not like the old bottle glass that were—that we normally had at USC, just broken bottles that were remelting. No, this is actual—beautiful colors, and so I had two different color furnaces and a clear tank at SC. So I’d go to SC, and I had, like—and SC is paying for the gas, and paying for the whole thing. So I mean, what a—talk about, you know—you feel like you’re robbing the bank. It was just like, too good to be true.

Hank Murta Adams explains how glass cullet is recycled. Oral history interview with Hank Murta Adams by Barb Elam, conducted via telephone, June 7, 2019, Bard Graduate Center. Clip length: 00:56.

Hank Murta Adams: And so the visuals that you sent me, I mean you show them to anybody and it’s like, ‘Wow, Candyland.’ So the reason for those bins, those outdoor bins, are because every glass factory utilizes a recycling of cullet and waste. So those bins are all separated because you can’t make a blue out of cadmium, and so those bins are all separated out so that they can reuse material and—for two reasons, it saves money, saves time, but it also helps in the melt. So that’s why the cullet yard, the picture’s of the cullet yard, which is right outside—it’s between the batch shed at Blenko and the main furnace, blow building—that’s where those pictures are taken.

Hank Murta Adams discusses his role in producing the Blenko catalog. Oral history interview with Hank Murta Adams by Barb Elam, conducted via telephone, June 7, 2019, Bard Graduate Center. Clip length: 03:31.

Hank Murta Adams: There are two really interesting facts I’ll tell you quickly: one was that the catalog was completely shot on film, obviously, back then—and that some of the shots for this color catalog were hour long exposures for each shot. They’d set the camera open, and open the shutter, and leave cause it was shot on these four-by-four Kodachromes. And when you look at these catalogs, there’s just this beautiful—like when—you know, when you look at a Kodachrome slide, there’s just something that’s so—I mean, we think of it as authentic, but it’s not, it’s just a very saturated color, it’s just another reality. And then, towards the end of my tenure there, like, ’90, maybe ’93, I go up there to produce the catalog and I would have to go up—it’s like a two hour drive up there—two and a half hour drive up from Milton [West Virginia] on up to Williamstown and Marietta to the publisher, and I would have to get a—Blenko had a big box truck, so we’d fill that thing entirely up with all the samples to be photographed. And because you have all the samples produced in six colors and the colors are always, you know—the color tank—the colors aren’t always right; they go off. And so the time period between when the samples we’ve produced, and even the stocks of the lines that are staying in the line—the items that are staying in the line from years prior—you had to assemble all that so it could be rephotographed. So we’d get a big box truck, fill all with these samples and then I’d get up there and you start to assemble the stuff on the glass shelves for the catalog and the color’s wrong or the piece is made horribly—I’d have to drive up and down and get these things, and I’d spend, the week, or 10 days I’d be up there—I’d be up and down a bunch of timesI’d have to go back and then call the factory—and say, ‘You’ve got to make this in topaz.’ The sample we have is just impossible, I can’t even fake it in a photograph. So towards the end of my tenure I tell that to the photographer and the publisher comes in, he says, ‘Oh don’t worry about that, we now have these Japanese digital printers, and we can adjust that color for you.’ And I was like, ‘What do you mean, you can adjust the color?’ And this is the earl—this is in the early part of digitization, and I’m like, ‘What the hell are you talking about you can adjust the coloring of the—’ you know, I just was like—you know—honestly, I mean it’s just seems—I’m not that old and it just seems like it’s so archaic and such another era—and so sure enough, that year—and it’s in the beginning of it—and they were these brand-new—I remember they were Japanese printing presses and they were able to dial in the color, and so he said I didn’t have like a topaz piece, or whatever the hell it was, he says, ‘Don’t worry about it, we can make that emerald if you want.’ And I’m like—I just was like—it was—to me it was impossible. And so—but I was happy, I didn’t have to drive up and down to Milton all week, and so—but it also was kind of like—and it really struck me as an artist back then, I was like, well, you don’t even have to make the work then, you know, like which is what it is today; you don’t have to make the work—you can completely—but that matches in with this reality of this, you know this very human, this very physically exhaustive, this very present material. And that’s the way I teach it, I teach it as a teaching example, you know, and there aren’t—give 30 years from now that’ll all be completely the perspective of that—I’m not saying I’ll disappear, but there’s a time period in this country from the seventies to like the middle eighties—late eighties that really speaks to what you’re talking about, about the loss of even—it’s kind of like right in front of our faces, but disappearing.