Before GlassWorks WV ceased production in autumn 2002, a victim of declining markets and high labor costs, each of its hand-blown wine glasses needed the skills of six workers.
“Our product had two f…
Before GlassWorks WV ceased production in autumn 2002, a victim of declining markets and high labor costs, each of its hand-blown wine glasses needed the skills of six workers. “Our product had two flaws: It was overpriced, and it was old and boring,” said Bob Gonze, the latest owner of the 77-year-old glass plant in Weston, West Virginia. The decline of the company is mirrored by other glassworks in West Virginia. When Gonze and his partners bought Weston“s last mouth-blown glassworks in October 2000, the plant had 255 employees making 16,000 blown glass items a day. In September 2003, Gonze began selling his remaining stock and other assets to pay off an estimated USD 3 million owed to creditors. Gonze blames the plant“s death on production expenses, especially labor costs. “Competing on price when a skilled Chinese glass worker makes USD 50 to USD 75 a month compared to our people making USD 2,000 to USD 4,000 per month, plus benefits, just does not compute,” Gonze said. However, Dean Six, curator of the West Virginia Museum of American Glass, disagrees. “Every time glass gets in trouble, like most industries, the first thing we yell is “foreign competition,“” Six said. Six said Congress investigated similar complaints during the 1960s, when the first wave of imports hit. “They concluded that the problem wasn“t foreign glass so much as the fact that we just weren“t buying glass at all,” Six said. After World War II, many Americans stopped sitting down to family meals around a table. Many new homes did not have dining rooms. “We don“t need two or three sets of glassware any more,” Six said. Other materials have taken the place of glass. One hundred years ago, by one historian“s estimate, the bars, hotels and restaurants of New York City broke 500,000 glass tumblers every day. Those had to be replaced. “Glass was the disposable paper of its day,” Six said. “Plastic, Styrofoam didn“t exist 100 years ago.” The glass industry in West Virginia goes back to before the US Civil War. The industry thrived because of fine quality silica, transportation on the Ohio River and later railroads, and cheap fuel sources. In 1902 there were up to 500 glass companies in West Virginia, employing tens of thousands of skilled workers. According to the US government“s most recent economic census in 1997, there were only 35 glass and glassware businesses in West Virginia, employing about 2,700 workers, and two flat glass businesses with 250 to 500 workers. In spite of the decline, the industry in West Virginia is not necessarily doomed. Blenko Glass started out in the 1920“s making hand-blown coloured flat glass for stained glass windows. Today the firm lives on producing mainly art glass pieces, although it was recently asked to make windows for the White House that would maintain the structure“s historical integrity. Blenko art glass items can often be bought for USD 100 apiece, and for USD 10 more the signature of fourth generation glassmaker Rick Blenko can be added.