With its distinctive hand-blown types in eye-catching colours, Blenko’s iconic glass is famend for its distinctive craftsmanship that has enthralled collectors for over a century.
All through its lengthy historical past, Blenko has developed numerous strategies and processes for making its useful and ornamental glass, nevertheless it’s the corporate’s dramatic and eccentric mid-century fashionable designs that appeal to collectors essentially the most. These classic items are additionally essentially the most priceless and could be value hundreds of {dollars}.
MID-CENTURY GOLDEN YEARS
Blenko Glass Firm was based by William John Blenko in 1893 in Indiana after he introduced his glassmaking abilities to the USA from London.
Initially known as Eureka Artwork Glass, the identify was finally modified to the Blenko Glass Firm someday after it settled into its everlasting residence in 1921 in Milton, West Virginia, the place it nonetheless operates at the moment.
A major turning level for the corporate was in 1947 when artist Winslow Anderson turned the primary design director. Anderson, who remained till 1963, launched cruets with bent necks, willowy decanters with teardrop stoppers, and a brand new product: non-functional sculptural designs. He established Blenko’s fame for cutting-edge items and laid the groundwork for later designers, together with Wayne Husted, essentially the most influential.
Husted, who developed new Blenko designs from 1954 to 1963, approached glassmaking in a way more experimental manner and expanded the corporate’s non-functional items with monumental sculptural creations. His items are a number of the most useful at the moment and are extremely prized by collectors. The very best-recorded worth in WorthPoint’s database for a chunk of Blenko glass is his “Bubble Wrap” sample 1960 decanter, which bought for $9,999 in July 2025.
Husted’s signature works are “architectural” ground items meant to be freestanding sculptures, starting from twenty to thirty-eight inches excessive. Their outsized scale and dazzling types are quintessential symbols of the modernist period.
Different legacy items are his figural works, that are smaller in scale and within the whimsical types of animals and folks.
In 1963, Joel Philip Myers turned Blenko’s design director. A self-taught glassblower, he developed new Blenko designs by way of 1970. His items, like mushroom decanters and paperweights, decanters with stoppers within the type of cowboy hats and longhorn skulls, and “Girl” decanters, introduced humor to the corporate’s sensibility.
VALUING BLENKO GLASS BY COLOR
The worth of classic Blenko glass is set by numerous components, together with age, situation, designer, and rarity, however the two primary components are colour and kind.
Blenko glass is available in a rainbow of hues, together with apricot, aqua, azure, cerulean, cobalt, crystal, gold, honey, rose, ruby, olive, tangerine, and teal. Colour and its depth vastly have an effect on the worth.
Items in colours like vibrant oranges and smoky grays produced through the mid-century are among the many most useful and extremely desired by collectors. Costs in WorthPoint’s database present that over the previous few years, many tangerine and grey items have fetched hundreds of {dollars}, together with a grey bubble decanter that bought for $2,500 in 2024 and a pair of tangerine desk lamps that bought for $3,350 in 2021.
Blenko additionally produced particular colours for less than a short while, making them extra priceless at the moment. Uncommon, single-year, or experimental colours, like mulberry (1958) and plum (1967), may promote for 4 figures.
Another colours that didn’t promote effectively through the mid-century are additionally now extraordinarily uncommon and priceless as a result of fewer items had been produced, together with honey and pale inexperienced from the Nineteen Fifties.
Specialty finishes, together with crystal Raindrop and white opalescent Rialto strains from the Nineteen Fifties, additionally bought poorly on the time however at the moment are exceptionally uncommon.
LARGE FORMS HOLD LARGER VALUE
The big number of Blenko designs and their various curiosity to collectors trigger costs to differ broadly. Listings within the database present that, over the previous few years, Blenko items have usually bought between $5 for smaller gadgets and $10,000 for tall ground examples. Although smaller items, which had been simpler to make, are typically reasonably priced, they’re simply as desired and embody ashtrays, Anderson’s cornucopia horn vases, and suncatchers.
The most costly classic Blenko glass items are the taller examples. Given how tough it was to handblow them with out breaking, these carry a better worth. In line with the database, many massive items have been promoting between $500 and $10,000, together with a 20-inch-high cobalt blue vase that bought for $9,500 in 2024 and a 29-inch-high ground decanter that introduced $2,500 additionally in 2024. Husted’s architectural items additionally carry excessive worth tags, like this uncommon epergne standing almost thirty-five inches excessive that bought for $8,988 in 2023.
IDENTIFYING BLENKO GLASS
When you come throughout a colourful piece of glass in an natural form and marvel if it’s an genuine Blenko, the very first thing to search for is a sticker. The corporate has at all times used a signature sticker on every of its designs to assist sign that the piece is hand made. Stickers have modified through the years, which helps establish the period through which a chunk was made, however all of them have “Blenko Handcraft.”
Sadly, many classic items not have their unique sticker, however there are different traits to search for:
Colour: True Blenko glass has exceptionally vibrant, saturated colours, just like the wealthy oranges and yellows used for mid-century items. Genuine firm colours not often look opaque, however have totally different levels of translucence.
Pontil marks: Since all real classic Blenko glass is hand-blown, items could have a pontil mark on their base the place they had been separated from the rod. Although Blenko glassblowers fire-polished pontil marks to scale back their visibility, they may nonetheless be tough and irregular.
Different marks: Blenko used numerous marks on items, together with a hand-signed “Blenko” utilized in 1958 on gadgets made by William Blenko, Jr., and a sandblasted “Blenko” mark used from 1958 to 1961, which Husted’s items have.
Blenko additionally provides a whole assortment of downloadable catalogs from the Nineteen Forties to assist establish uncommon and priceless items.
With its dynamic designs, wealthy, daring colours, and very good artistry, it’s straightforward to see why Blenko glass has impressed a loyal following of collectors and fans, making it a long-lasting favourite.
Adina Ok. Francis has been a author and editor within the antiques and collectibles area for greater than twenty years. She has a little bit of an obsession with the Victorians and thinks that canines are one in every of life’s biggest presents.
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