MY OLD GLASS BROKE! FIX IT! Why can't you repair the vase my grandmother left me? You made it!

One of the regular contacts we get through our customer service channels is when one of your precious vintage Blenko heirlooms has suffered an unfortunate loss. Maybe your brand new kitty lacked the wherewithal to dodge your glass, or you suffered an unexpected earthquake. (Museum putty is the answer to both of these issues, though—!) Either way, you’re left with a perfect pile of shards that used to be a beloved piece of Blenko glass.

There’s no way around the heartache, that’s for sure. We recommend a few deep breaths and maybe even a primal scream. (Give y’all’s neighbors a head’s up before that scream, though, so they don’t get worried.)

And then – we recommend moving on. It’s hard! It’s hard because you think – well, Blenko is still in business, surely they can do something to help me with this piece of their vintage glass. But there isn’t, really. There’s UV glue, to be sure. And there are fine restoration artists out there that might be able to piece the piece back together – but in almost all cases, the restoration will show the cracks and breaks. And before you ask – we don’t glue pieces back together.

Great, you’re thinking. Wonderful. But if Blenko made it the first time, why can’t they make a new one for me now?

We’ve talked about this in a couple of different places, but we’ll bring it all together here. For one thing - we’re unlikely to have the right mould. While many of our historical pieces were made with metal or other material moulds, our bread and butter have been hand-carved cherrywood moulds. These have a limited life, and so they rarely, if ever, last more than the year that they’re initially carved.

For another thing, and we’ve talked about this in a different blog post – we only have so many colors available to us at a given time. The colors we offer now are the colors we offer now – so batching a historical color recipe to match a vintage piece would take weeks, tons of man hours to dial in and work out the color if it isn’t accurate, etc. Otherwise, the colors we have are dedicated to fulfilling the orders we have now – so we can’t quickly pivot to bring back a special color for a single piece.

It can be so hard to lose a favorite piece of glass, especially if it was an heirloom or a hand-me-down or gift – or even if it was just that amazing piece you found at a yard sale a decade ago. But one of the reasons that we find glass so beautiful – around here, anyway – is that it is so fragile. It requires our care!