On this West Virginia Morning, Blenko Glass has been making everything from stem and table ware to decorative glass figurines for more than a century and proposed federal protections for the spring salamander.
On this West Virginia Morning, Emily Rice toured the Blenko Factory in Milton where Blenko Glass has been making everything from stem and table ware to decorative glass figurines through traditional, hand-carved cherry wood molds for more than a century.
Also, Curtis Tate spoke with a senior scientist at the Center for Biological Diversity about the spring salamander and proposed federal protections.
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Blenko Glass Company founded the Festival of Glass at the turn of the 21st century to celebrate and preserve the heritage of glassmaking in Appalachia.
On any particular day at Blenko Glass Company in Milton, West Virginia, the furnaces blaze with innovation as artists mold their glass creations into shapes that become iconic pieces of West Virginia history.
Charles Chafin has worked at Blenko for nearly three decades. He is passionate about his work and passes that gift along to his trainees.
“I’m having the best time in my life teaching the young ones all about Blenko glass, and they’re moving up quicker and I’m really loving that,” Chafin said.
A worker’s tools lay cooling after use in the fiery furnace.
Credit: Emily Rice/West Virginia Public Broadcasting
Blenko Glass Company’s Festival of Glass will make its return this year on Aug. 5, and Chafin is excited for the return of the event. He said he enjoys meeting visitors from out-of-state.
“We are getting ready for our festival and it’ll be a great one,” Chaffin said. “We’ve been missing it for two or three years over this COVID. And now we start back, and I can’t wait to meet all the people. They come from all over the United States, they do. We had some three years ago, they were from Hawaii, California, Wyoming, Maine and we had Maryland, Ohio, Kentucky and West Virginia. I hope we have a lot more out-of-state people come to see this. It is pretty cool.”
Blenko Glass Company founded the Festival of Glass at the turn of the 21st century to celebrate and preserve the heritage of glassmaking in Appalachia.
The company is a cultural icon of the Mountain State with roots that run deep through its passionate employees.
James Arnett, creative director of Blenko Glass, said the Festival of Glass is a chance for visitors to have an immersive experience in the workshop.
“We have run this festival of glass every year as a kind of immersive experience for our customers and our collectors to come to Milton, West Virginia to take classes to have hands-on glass experiences, to buy specialty wares to enjoy the products that we make for the festival of glass,” Arnett said.
For each festival, Blenko creates a one-of-a-kind collector’s piece. This year, the festival’s theme is ‘Be There Or Be Square’ as an homage to this year’s square peg decanter.
“This year, as we do every year, we’re going to be making a special festival of glass decanter, called the square peg decanter. This year it’s squared olive decanter with a cobalt wrap and a crystal cube stopper,” Arnett said.
Blenko Glass’ 2023 square peg decanter with assorted glass pieces for the festival.
Credit: Emily Rice/West Virginia Public Broadcasting
Blenko used to be one of 400 glass companies in West Virginia. Today, it is one of a handful in operation. To honor those fallen companies in the past, Blenko has been able to acquire old molds from those production companies to include in their festival piece.
However, this year, the festival’s main staple is slightly different.
“Blenko glass is of course known for its mid-century modern design,” Arnett said. “So for this year, in honoring British modernist art glass, we’re folding in some of that inspiration, some of that aesthetic and honoring other glass makers who have made tableware much like Blenko has by hand with bright colors and using old techniques.”
While Arnett may have only been in his position for four months, his passion for Blenko Glass runs deep.
“There’s nothing like being able to come into a place like this and be surrounded and suffused with color,” Arnett said. “It really drives me.”
Blenko is a 130-year-old company with roots that extend deep into West Virginia’s history.
“We have a history and a heritage here in West Virginia that’s hard to match anywhere,” Arnett said. “[Blenko] has been so deeply situated in place and with the people here in the Milton tri-state area and Appalachia.”
Glass decorations lay in a pan ready to be affixed to various pieces.
Credit: Emily Rice/West Virginia Public Broadcasting
Akers-Toler points out that, like dancers, glassmakers often have to move quickly and with precise intention to create their pieces before the glass cools and hardens.
A local of Raleigh County in southern West Virginia, Akers-Toler is the founder and managing artistic director of the West Virginia Dance Company, the only professional touring dance company in the state.
A few years ago, Akers-Toler’s son, Holden, gave her a glass vase made by Hinkle. Later, she met Hinkle, who mentioned the process of making glass is similar to her own craft. “He said, ‘so many people have said it’s like we’re dancing.’ And he said, ‘I’ve always wanted to, you know, see a dance about that.’ And I went ‘oh!’”
Credit Kelli Whitfield / West Virginia Dance Company
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West Virginia Dance Company
West Virginia Dance Company dancers fling white fabric during a performance of “Catching Light.”
“Catching Light” is not the only piece Akers-Toler has created based on some aspect of West Virginia’s culture or history. She’s choreographed pieces that explore labor history and the West Virginia Mine Wars, literature by writers from the area like Pearl S. Buck, the struggles of addiction, and even the relationship between people and the environment through modern dance.
“People laugh at me for saying this, but I wanted to share dance with my people, and I felt there was a need here. We had lots of excellent dance schools, but we didn’t have any really thing intensely in modern dance at all, and we didn’t have a professional touring dance company.”
But there are challenges to running a modern dance company in southern West Virginia. Akers-Toler’s company travels widely to rural communities throughout the region, performing in a variety of spaces. Because there are not the same resources that larger cities have, the company often manages its own light design, sound production, costuming, promotion, booking, and grant writing, which is a similar situation for many other artists in rural areas.
While some may have seen building a modern dance company in a heavily rural space like West Virginia as a long shot, Akers-Toler embraced the unique challenges and rewards of the work: “I personally feel that I have had more of an opportunity to grow and to learn because I am here. I don’t know. I just feel like I would — and a lot of us — would not have gotten the opportunities to grow as artists if we weren’t here. Because the struggle also brings knowledge.”
Credit Kelli Whitfield / West Virginia Dance Company
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West Virginia Dance Company
West Virginia Dance Company dancers perform “Catching Light”
Being an artist in West Virginia also comes with other unique benefits like the low cost of living, according to dancer Donald Laney, a long-time friend of Akers-Toler and co-artistic director of the West Virginia Dance Company. “Where else can I make a living in the arts and not pick up any other jobs? Most people don’t think West Virginia would have something like this.”
Laney said telling a story through dance is similar to the process a writer uses, but instead of selecting words to tell a story, choreographers carefully choose unique movements. “We train our bodies, so our physical, our bodies tell stories,” Laney said.
‘Catching Light’
“Catching Light” is an example of one such story. On stage, six dancers wear glistening, iridescent pants to give the appearance of glass, and their bodies move through yoga-type shapes and angles to suggest glass transitioning from liquid to solid.
As Booth speaks, the dancers swirl into different directions across the stage, flinging pieces of flowy white fabric to represent the chaotic movement of hot, liquid glass as the spinning blowpipe pulls it from the fire.
The Human Element in Sharing Art
One of the key fascinations Toneta Akers-Toler had with glass was its human element: “In order to get it to live and become a bigger structure, the human being actually breathes into the art form, so part of their chemistry is always in that piece of art.”
The glass’ transformation from solid to liquid to solid again could only be performed by the body and breath of a craftsperson. Similarly, a dance only comes to life by the body and breath of the dancers, especially as they perform the story for an audience.
Credit Kelli Whitfield / West Virginia Dance Company
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West Virginia Dance Company
Toneta Akers-Toler
According to Akers-Toler, the audience brings the final crucial element to the dance. Without them, there would be no story to share, and modern dance is a shared storytelling event between dancer and spectator. “They would have a certain feeling about the whole thing. But at least 50% where they can bring their own experiences into watching it, and then they can have their own story.”
At a performance in February earlier this year in Lewisburg, W.Va., audience member Ethan Serr said that’s what brought him to come see “Love of Power vs. Power of Love,” one of the dance company’s latest pieces. “I know it’s very, a narrative, it’s very expressive. And so I guess I’m just trying to be swept along, swept along for the journey.”
“Just to watch it, to see the form, to see people of our state be out pushing this art form. It’s just part of capturing that magic and love of the art,” said Marcus Fiorvante, who came to watch the performance.
Despite the cancellation of their season because of the pandemic, the West Virginia Dance Company still maintains their storytelling and communicating with audiences through some digital performances online, and Akers-Toler says they hope to resume their in-person performances as soon as it is safe.
This story is part of the Inside Appalachia Folkways Reporting Project, a partnership with West Virginia Public Broadcasting’s Inside Appalachia and the Folklife Program of the West Virginia Humanities Council. The Folkways Reporting Project is made possible in part with support from Margaret A. Cargill Philanthropies to the West Virginia Public Broadcasting Foundation. Subscribe to the podcast to hear more stories of Appalachian folklife, arts, and culture.
