Charlie at Wissmach's Entrance

Yesterday, we spewed out of a maze of West Virginia roads onto the Ohio River, then hung out at a chain-link covered window watching hard-working people create stained glass.

Charlie wore his arms out turning the steering wheel back and forth as we traveled the noodle puzzle from Ann Marie Garden on the Chesapeake Bay, Maryland, to the Paul Wissmach Glass Company, Inc in Paden City, West Virginia. We had come to buy hundreds of pounds of  scrap glass (“hobby glass”) and observe one of the  oldest manufacturing processes on earth.

After we arrived and checked in, we watched scenes from a Monty Python sketch (minus the funny lines and slapstick antics) — giant cauldrons, oversized iron ladles, fiery furnaces, fiercely muscled men pouring glowing orange liquid slowly across rollers to form a thin, lightly sparkling sheet. Stained glassmaking, we learned, hasn’t changed since its Golden Age in Europe in the 12th and 13th centuries.

Wissmach Factory Floor

Furnace at 2500F

Taking bad glass to the cooling cauldron

Sand, soda, lime and fire – these have ever been the elements of glassmaking. Wissmach’s recipe goes like this: Mix sand, soda and lime with alkaline fluxes and stabilizing ingredients. Toss in cobalt, manganese, selenium or cadmium for color. Mix and melt at 2,500 F. Ladle molten glass into a machine which rolls the glass into 1/8-inch thick sheets. Cool in an “annealing lehr,” a kiln that cools the glass evenly so it won’t break.

Paul Wissmach started making stained glass on the banks of the Ohio in 1904. Today, the company’s literature brags about producing “the greatest variety of opalescent and cathedral glass.” They make about 13,000 square feet of glass each day, offering thousands of color and coating combos, such as Seville double rolled ripple, moss florentine seedy, English muffles, dew drops, ripples and Florentines. You might be glad to know that President Obama and his aides view their top-secret documents through American glass; Wissmach glass illuminates the ceiling of the executive offices in the White House.

Powdered chemicals that, when melted, become glass

Rolling the sheets

Smoothing the sheets

Pushing glass sheets into the "lehr"

Bins of glass at Wissmach

Wissmach is also still family-owned, but the name of the family in charge has changed. The Feldmeier clan have been associated with Wissmach since 1917. The very busy Mark Feldmeier, sales manager, showed us to the “hobby glass” bins, flipped the light switch and pointed us to the scale and gloves.

We sifted scraps for an hour or so, finding wonderous pieces – I have no idea what they’re called — in swirly orange and white, deep purple, aqua, forest green, fiery red, robin’s egg blue.. Some pieces had floral patterns pressed into the back — they look like pieces of crayola-colored chenille bedspread.

We packed 195 pounds of fragile glass into our overstuffed van, which required the brainpower of a Cray and the patience of a Job (neither of which either of us have). Yet, somehow, it all, eventually fit.

Charlie weighs the glass

Packing the van

We hope you’ll like seeing our new glass at upcoming shows! If you’re ever in the middle of nowhere in West Virginia, we totally recommend you stop by Wissmach — a time-traveling treat!

Barge on the Ohio River at a Paden City park

Sunflowers on the banks of the Ohio River