Immigrant glassmaker finds a home in Arlington

At the age of 57, Momka Peeva left her native Bulgaria and immigrated to the United States to be closer to her granddaughter.

She didn’t speak much English, didn’t know how to drive a car and struggled to find a job.

More than 20 years later, she’s become a well-known name in the glass industry, owning Momka’s Glass in Arlington.

Peeva is a chemical engineer and has a master’s degree in the technology of glass.

“I know very well the chemistry of glass,” she said.

In fact, she knows it so well, she wrote a book in 1993 — “Technology of Glass” — that she said is still the standard text in Bulgaria today.

She was the director of a technical high school in Bulgaria and was a contributor to the Bulgarian Institute of Glass and Ceramics.

Her work in Bulgaria focused more on soft glass, not the colored glass rods she’s known for today. Glass can be separated into two categories — hard glass and soft glass. Soft glass is the type likely found in windows or wine glasses.

Hard glass is frequently used in cookware because it can withstand higher temperatures.

Both kinds of glass are used in the art world. Blown-glass sculptures, like those by Dale Chihuly, use soft glass.

Hard glass is often melted over a flame and used in everything from glass beads to pipes to ornamental art.

“(Hard glass) is kind of like Play-Doh,” said Igor Peeva, who is Peeva’s son and helps with marketing. “It has that consistency when you melt it.”

Peeva works with borosilicate glass, a hard glass more commonly known by one of its trade names, Pyrex. She creates colored boro glass rods that are about 10 to 20 inches long and about the thickness of a pencil.

Her specialty is creating different colors of boro glass, which she developed for a company in Portland, Oregon, soon after she immigrated to the United States in 1993. Before Peeva came along, the company’s color options were limited.

“They only had blue, dark green,” Peeva said. “I developed the bright colors.”

But Peeva felt her efforts at the company were unappreciated, and she eventually struck out on her own, starting Momka’s Glass in 2004.

She brought her son, Geo, a mechanical engineer, over from Bulgaria to help with the business.

“We named it Momka’s Glass because the people who use the colors I did for another company, they know my name,” Peeva said. “The artists could recognize who’s doing the good color.”

Momka’s Glass did well in its early years and they added four more employees.

But business dropped when the financial crisis hit in 2008, and the extra employees were laid off. Peeva was also struggling to maintain the business while paying higher rent on a shop in Lynnwood.

“We started to look for a cheaper place and my son Geo found a house and shop and big property in Arlington,” Peeva said. “We started to do glass in our own shop.”

While they bring in part-time help every once in a while, it’s mostly just Peeva and Geo creating the glass rods. They offer more than 90 products in colors ranging from Caribbean Coral to Scarlet Pink to Plum Harvest.

The boro glass industry on the West Coast has grown considerably in recent years, especially with the legalization of marijuana, Igor Peev said.

“A lot of what people make out of boro glass are smoking accessories,” he said.

Many of Momka’s Glass’ loyal customers are women who are artists and Momka’s Glass’ new website features an exclusive showcase on “Women in Boro.” Igor Peev said they’ve received more than a dozen submissions for the showcase.

The company is trying to highlight women’s participation in the field, but also Peeva’s role as a woman in the glass industry.

“She basically managed to build a business and establish herself as someone in the industry who’s really contributed to the growth of the industry,” he said.