Why can't you sell me a new stopper? I saw you had a bunch of them when I took a tour.

Stoppers stoppers stoppers – there’s a booming business in faked and replica Blenko stoppers on Ebay. (Yes, we know. Yes, we have done everything we can to shut it down.) Stoppers are, usually, the first casualty on our exquisite decanters. Some collectors are purists: just won’t buy a decanter without the stopper. Others (we count ourselves) are just happy to see a beautiful piece of Blenko in the wild. Either way, there are more decanter bottoms out there than there are stoppers, and that’s a persistent source of consternation.

One of the tricks to all of this is that Blenko ‘marries’ their stoppers to their decanter bottles. This means that we grind the stoppers into the bottles, one-by-one, and each stopper is married to its bottle, and its bottle alone. Now, if you found a matching stopper to your decanter style, the chances are that it will fit your bottle – for the most part, both stoppers and bottles will be regular enough to allow for some exchange or transit between bottles. (But there’s never a guarantee!!)

For some stoppered wares we made over long periods of time – think of our 920 decanters in all their sizes and colors – there’s always a chance that the stopper shape is slightly different, depending on the era and the maker. So there’s no guarantee that the stopper will be the right stopper for your stopperless bottle.

But wait, you say, why can’t you make me a new stopper for my vintage decanter? (We feel like a broken record, but–) Well, we can’t just make any color, at any time. We’re a production factory – which means that we work at a volume of glass and glass production that just does not permit one-off, singular, custom, special orders.

And for those of you who have been on our tour, wait, wait, you say – what about that dusty shelf of assorted decanter stoppers you’ve got? Surely you could paw through those and find me the right one in the right color.

We wish that were true - or plausible. You’re right that we do have a dusty shelf of stoppers in boxes. But these stoppers were the ones that didn’t fit any of the wares they were designed for – it’s our shelf of misfit stopper orphans. And we do use them! Charlie Harshbarger dives into that stash every time he lampifies one of our wares – and tries his best to find a finial that might fit the style or the shape. So those stoppers, orphaned though they are, continuously find new uses around the factories for our (new) wares.

For the stopperless, though – consider the shape and form of the decanter bottom you have. There’s nothing wrong with it – it’s beautiful, it’s shapely, and let’s be honest – you’re not using your stoppered decanters to actually decant things. We know you better than that – so enjoy the piece! Use it as a vase, or pop it in the window where it can shine, stoppered or not!