After 30 Years, Thames Glass is Still One of a Kind [Video]

When you walk into , shelves are packed with colorful glass creations, no one identical to another. 

Each gleaming blue fish on the wall started out as a glob of molten glass, made its way into one of the 2070 degree furnaces, and was artfully transformed just feet away in a studio connected to the store.

Over the past 30 years, co-owner Matthew Buechner has trained the store’s glass blowers, as well as many other glass blowers around the state.

All in the Family

The Buechners have glass blowing in their blood. Matthew, along with his co-owner and wife Adrian Buechner, brought the art of hand-blown glass from their home in Corning, N.Y. to Newport in 1981 and have built a loyal following ever since.

Matthew’s father worked for Corning Glass and was the founding director of the Corning Museum of Glass. He later went on to be president of the now-defunct, high-end Steuben Glass Works.

“There’s not many places in town where you can buy something that was made right here in Newport,” Adrian Buechner said.

That uniqueness and local connection is what keep their customers coming back year after year, she said. 

Surviving the Winter

No business focuses on one thing these days, Buechner said.

About six years ago, Thames Glass opened up its creation process to the public and offered classes on how to make paperweights, ornaments or vases.

The more ambitious crowd will often ask to make a more complex piece, but the studio limits customers to the most simple processes.

Typically, glass blowers will make inventory in the morning and give lessons in the afternoon and on weekends.

“Usually we’re slower this time of year than during summer and Christmas, but it’s been so warm that we’re much busier than last year,” Buechner said. “Usually it’s dead in January and February.”

She said having such a mild winter has definitely impacted the amount of customers she has coming into the store, as well as people signing up for the lessons.

Getting It Just Right

Watching Shane Dorey, one of the shop's many glass blowers, make a paperweight almost makes the process look easy. He twirls a scorching metal rod with glowing hot glass just so—too fast or too slow and it will slide right off into the blazing furnace.

Then, continuing that same rhythm and spinning the rod with perfect balance, he will turn the misshapen blob into a perfectly circular paperweight with what looks like a pair of giant tweezers. Each step has to be done just right.

The entire process only takes Dorey a few minutes before he carries it with a heavily gloved hand and mask to the cooling station.

Complicated pieces are usually made in teams and can take up to an hour to craft. The most ornate pieces at Thames Glass are a set of perfume bottles with intricately made trees during each season. Their craftsmanship earns each of them a $230 price tag.

“For a complicated phase it takes about an hour and 20 years (of experience),” Adrian Buechner said with a knowing smile.