One of the best things about living in Ohio is being close enough to drive to the Wissmach Glass Factory in Paden City, WV.
Video transcript for deaf or hard of hearing:
Hi Mosaic Fans! I wanted to show you the Wissmach Glass Factory where I got this gorgeous glass for an awesome price.
At the factory they have scrap glass available to pick through for $1 a pound. As you can see, it’s not just tiny shards, it’s large pieces of their gorgeous stained glass. Even Mango was enjoying the visit, though mostly because one of the employees shared his lunch with Mango.
Here is their bin of COE 90 glass, which is unfortunately pretty sparse. I had hoped to find something good for my sister that fuses this kind of glass, but there wasn’t anything interesting, or basics like clear glass.
There’s even more glass here around the corner and you can choose from any of these bins down to the No Smoking sign. And someone pointed out to me today that there’s also this bin of samples.
Here’s most of the glass I got during this trip. It’s probably thousands of dollars worth of glass and I only paid $300 for it, so that was a pretty good deal. As you can see, a lot of it is a little more broken than it was at the factory and I have a few bags of smaller, broken pieces because unfortunately right as I left the factory, a car pulled out in front of me and I had to slam on my brakes, which broke a lot of the glass. I guess it’s a good thing I do mosaics!
What I mostly stopped in for was this wispy iridescent glass that varies in color from amber to white. It’s what I used as the background for the Copper I mosaic. I’ve fallen deeply in love with it and want to use it more.
I wanted to find glass to use for more copper mosaics, but didn’t find a lot. I did find a lot more iridescent glass than usual though.
So that’s it for this Wissmach Glass trip. I hope you get a chance to either go there or to another glass factory sometime because in addition to finding this inexpensive glass you can pick out, they also give tours to show how they make the glass. I’ve never been on one of these tours and I would love to and I hope all of you get to sometime too. Thank you!