WV Living Fall 2020

discover ››

The process is a mixture of surprisingly low- and very high-tech: The ladle buggy looks like it’s straight from the Middle Ages, while the lehr is an instrument of precision electronics. “It’s not as automated as you’d think it would be,” Feldmeier says. “It’s best if it’s handmade. Stained glass is supposed to look like art—each sheet looks different.” How many types of glass does the world’s most diversified company make? Dozens of colors: cool teals and cobalts, warm coppers and ambers and wines, but also so many patterns—rippled and mottled and flowing in all different color combinations, transparent to opaque, and with more than a dozen surface textures. All combinations taken into account, it comes to about 3,000 varieties. Wissmach makes 6,000 square feet of stained glass a day and exports about half of it. Its glass graces beautiful structures across the U.S. and around the world, including the White House, the massive Santuario de Mártires de Cristo in Guadalajara, Mexico, and the innovative Minharot Olam underground cemetery in Jerusalem. Stained glass is a niche market with competitors Feldmeier can tick off on one hand—manufacturers in Indiana, Pennsylvania, and Oregon as well as one in China and another in Mexico. But Wissmach’s long history gives it an edge. “We’ve got a head start on companies that came up in the last 30, 40 years,” Feldmeier says. He also credits Wissmach’s workforce of about 30. His own family has been part of it for nearly a century. His grandfather moved from Pittsburgh to work there in the 1920s and, in 1987, the company passed into the hands of Feldmeier’s father, who had long managed the plant. Feldmeier himself started working there part-time and summers in junior high in the 1970s, then full-time

A Touch of Glass Time and craftsmanship have put Paul Wissmach Glass Co. of Paden City in a class by itself. HOW WE DID I T W PADEN CI T Y

prized by artists and architects around the world, workers wheel a huge ladle of red-hot molten glass from the furnace and pour it onto rollers. It oozes out onto a platform in seconds, very slightly cooled and shaped into a nearly rectangular blob of even thickness. A moment later, another worker slides a spatula-like tool under its length to make sure it doesn’t stick, then pushes it into the lehr—that’s a kiln that anneals the glass, or cools it in a controlled way that makes it strong. Workers at the other end cut and finish the sheet.

“ themostdiversifiedglass company in the world.” That’s how Mark Feldmeier starts when he’s asked about Paul Wissmach Glass Co. “We make the largest variety of any glass manufacturer—mainly because we’ve been in business for 116 years.” This art glass maker in the Ohio River town of Paden City was established by Paul Wissmach, a German immigrant, in 1904. It started making stained glass soon after, and that’s been its claim to fame. To make one of the vibrant expanses

The Sands of Time Paul Wissmach Glass Co. goes with the flow.

1910 Wissmach realizes his dream of creating colored sheet glass to inspire stained glass work and renames the company for himself.

1927 A fire destroys vital manufacturing and

1904 Paul Wissmach founds the Ohio Valley Glass Company to manufacture raised glass letters, wire glass, and tubing.

warehouse facilities—but the company recovers with new and larger buildings.

22 wvl • fall 2020

Made with FlippingBook - professional solution for displaying marketing and sales documents online