This Featured Item represents only the second time here at Vintage Modern glasshouse that we have featured a design from one of Wayne Husted's seminal Specialty Lines. To borrow from the background I provided on the previous item: in 1960 Blenko engaged in a daring new experiment; the production of three entirely new and distinctive lines of designs. Each line was stylistically and technically consistent and each was given a name; Raindrop, Regal and Rialto. Regal was a ruby body with crystal accents, Rialto was an opalescent glass encased in crystal and with applied Ruby elements or stoppers and Raindrop consisted of an extremely thick crystal glass dominated by randomly sized and clustered bubbles.

On its own, the introduction of these specialty lines meant a significant increase in production as it added 50 new designs to Blenko's then standard line of about 140. In addition to increased quantity the new designs were both more difficult and costly to produce. This new endeavor was a daring expansion for a company the size of Blenko and is a good indication of the success and confidence of the company. These exceptional new lines sold at a premium and demonstrated that Blenko was indeed a design leader and willing to take significant risks with bold new ventures. But the experiment was a short lived one; in fact Rialto and Raindrop were made for only that one year and the Regal line was expanded then discontinued the following year.

Raindrop was for Blenko and entirely new look, like nothing the company had produced before - and I would argue, like nothing they ever produced again. This line is an excellent barometer both of Husted's skills as a designer and of his depth of knowledge in the field of glass design. No designer lives in a bubble, they perpetually sample from history and the zeitgeist of the time and like any great designer Husted kept abreast of new trends and held in high regard the work of certain other glass designers - among them Kaj Franck and Erik Hoglund.

Both Franck and Hoglund were at the forefront of European glass design and much of their work was involved with exploring the natural qualities of glass, in particular celebrating imperfection and naturally occurring elements rather than suppressing them. With Hoglund at Boda (aka Kosta Boda) and Franck at Iittala and Nuutajarvi in Sweden, both, in different ways in the 1950's, put into production vessels that exaggerated naturally occurring bubbles in glass. Though inspired by this work Husted's contribution to the genre was entirely unique and heretofore unexplored in American glass.

On a technical level, the thickness of the glass and quantity and variety of bubbles was, typical for Husted, a striding step beyond previous explorations. Husted relates in interviews that, like Rialto, technical difficulties seriously curtailed production, resulting in a disastrously small production run for the company; bubbles often burst through deforming the shape, and clarity in the glass was often impossible to achieve. But the true success lay not in the technical aspects but in the marriage of an exciting new technique with Husted's irrepressibly novel and daring forms.

This bowl in particular, a gondola type form, is an excellent example of Husted's innovative and particularly appropriate styling of the Raindrop line. One can envision this bowl as a boat gliding through disturbed, frothy waters, yet one needs only pick it up to be astonished by it's incredible weight and conjure instead a solid rock crystal sculpture or objet de vertu.