Happy holidays — and happy new year from the Blenko factory family!
2023 was a big year for Blenko - and all thanks to you, who came along for the ride! We appreciated your enthusiasm and support through West Virginia Day, our reignited Festival of Glass, and the resumption of in-person experiences - blow-your-own and design-your-own – after several years hiatus. It was a great year to come to Milton - and to send out our glass to all corners of the world.
In the year ahead, we have ambitious plans at Blenko. We’re ready to bring out, and bring in, a host of talented designers and artists next year. We’re excited to announce that Phil Vinson, owner of Mobile Glassblowing Studios in Americus, Georgia, and accomplished glassworker and mould-maker, will be our first Guest Designer in 2024 - and we’re putting the finishing touches on some spectacular designs of his coming out in February. We’ve had a terrific time bringing him out to Milton to work with our shops, blow glass at our Festival of Glass, and teach us the ways of his mobile furnaces. We’ll be sharing some highlights of his time with us in the lead up to his February release!
In the meantime, we’ve been deeply inspired by space - and science - and all kinds of geekery. 2024 will be the Year of New Space Age Design. Blenko’s midcentury heyday defined the atomic era and space age in glass design, and we’re casting our eyes once more to the skies for inspiration.
New years at Blenko bring new colors – we’re debuting a new, rich green, Malachite, and retiring our beloved throwback green, Olive. We made Hay with Topaz in 2023, and we’re bringing Topaz into our line colors for 2024. Spring Crocus did some amazing work for us last year - perhaps most memorably as coal and in Mothmen – but we have retired her for 2024. We’re also reaching into our historical batch books to see if we can’t bring back a one- or two-year color, or two. (What historical colors would you like to see again?)
We’re hitting the ground running in January — but our Water Bottle Art Contest is already underway ahead of our favorite fictional holiday, Water Bottle Week!
New colors are just the tip of the iceberg - Water Bottle Week 2024 (January 22-28) will be the kickoff of one of our most ambitious water bottle projects ever - it’s going to be out of this world! Clue number one? Cue the Holst! However you celebrate Water Bottle Week, consider spending it with us - or making plans to visit us at the end of January for a couple of exciting and brand new experiences on offer! Stay tuned in the first week of January for a full list of dates and descriptions, and ticket booking on our website.
Along these lines, we know that Blenko Glass makes the perfect gift for your loved ones, and we have a couple of really special pieces in the works for Valentine’s Day. We’ve been listening to your comments on social media and stewing on it. More decanters, you said? Well, okay! Y’all have a sweet spot for swung vases? Don’t mind if we do! Single this Valentine’s Day? Practice self-love and treat yourself!
Even before the not-yet-federally-recognized holiday of Water Bottle Week, and our teaser of Valentine’s Day, we’re pumped to announce our Game Night release. Inspired by our new and renewed habits of coming together to bond and play games since the pandemic, this release will introduce all new shapes and forms for our glass. This drop was borne of the sheer will of our employees, who have been urging us for years to make pieces that celebrate our geekery. (Raises a twenty-sided tumbler:) This one’s for us!
For those marking their (Blenko?) calendars, we’ve decided to move our Festival of Glass out of the dog days of summer, when hot shop temperatures can really cause problems for our visitors, to April 5-6, 2024. Save the date!
If you’re a long time collector of Blenko - thank you for your support. If you’re just finding your way to us — welcome to Blenko — the most colorful name in glass.
With much excitement,
James Arnett
Creative Director