Colleen Price and her husband, Stan, show examples of popular Spectrum Glass work that has been a staple of their own business, Covenant Art Glass, in Everett. Spectrum Glass, a south Snohomish County business, plans to close in July.

Colleen Price and her husband, Stan, show examples of popular Spectrum Glass work that has been a staple of their own business, Covenant Art Glass, in Everett. Spectrum Glass, a south Snohomish County business, plans to close in July.

Glassmaker’s impending closure shocks artists

Spectrum Glass Company’s unexpected announcement that it’s closing, combined with Oregon’s crackdown on Portland glass manufacturers because of public health concerns, has sent specialty glass prices soaring and shaken the glass art community.

Glass distributors, artists and teachers are rushing to stock up on raw material while wondering if the glass industry can withstand increasingly stricter air emission regulations.

“There’s tens of thousands of artists who depend on Spectrum through retail shops and distributors,” said David Scott of Northwest Art Glass in Redmond, a wholesale supplier of glass. “Spectrum is close to 60 percent of our warehouse stock. We’ll adjust, we’ll survive but lots of people, I’m sure, won’t.”

Spectrum, which has a Woodinville address, but is in south Snohomish County, is the largest manufacturer of specialty art glass in the world, producing hundreds of colors of sheet glass used by artists and architects to create art and household objects that are fused, blown, kiln-formed, or made into stained glass.

Spectrum cited nearly a decade of declining sales, rising operating costs and the expense of responding to new emission control regulations from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency for its decision.

The company’s 124 employees will receive severance packages. The plant will continue operations for the next 60 to 75 days while selling off its inventory.

“It’s sort of like Kodak announcing it’s no longer going to make film anymore,” said Maria Ruano, owner of Bedrock Industries in Seattle, a combination studio and retail store that’s depended on Spectrum glass for 22 years.

Spectrum produces more than 300 colors and textures of glass, and its product list exceeds 450 items. Architects also incorporate Spectrum products into glass tiles, entryway windows, lamps and cabinets.

Creations made from Spectrum’s can be found around the globe; a domed glass studio in India; a high-end gallery in London, novelty gift stores in Australia and, closer to home, in a waiting room of Cascade Skagit Health Alliance in Arlington in a mural made by local artist Anita Black.

Black recently closed her glass art shop and studio, The Glass Cottage, in Arlington after 16 years because of declining sales.

“Demand for glass in general is way down,” Black said. Had her shop stayed open, the cash register would now be working overtime.

“Everybody is making a run on glass right now,” she said. “All over the world, prices have doubled, tripled or more. It’s amazing.”

Concern over toxic metal emissions has forced two manufacturers in Portland, Bullseye Glass and Uroboros Glass Studios, to halt production of colored glass while they install new furnace filters designed to nearly eliminate emissions of cadmium and arsenic. The heavy metals are used to produce dozens of red, yellow and orange colors that go by names such as pimento red, canary yellow and butterscotch. The plants voluntarily stopped using the metals in February after an air monitor in southeast Portland detected high levels of cadmium and arsenic, both known carcinogens.

Bullseye resumed production of its cadmium colors in early April using a new filtration system.

On Thursday, Oregon Gov. Kate Brown ordered Bullseye to cease and desist operations after high lead levels were found in the air at a nearby daycare center. Bullseye said in a statement that the state keeps adding metals to its restricted use list, such as cobalt, manganese, nickel and selenium, without evidence of harm.

“All of a sudden to be thrown in the headlights, so to speak, to be portrayed as someone evil doing something bad in a community that we love,” Bullseye founder and co-owner Dan Schwoerer told Portland’s KATU News. “I’m just flabbergasted that we would be treated this way.” The state ordered Bullseye to stop using seven materials crucial to many of its colored sheet glass for 10 days.

“It pretty much eliminates almost every color we make,” Schwoerer said.

Spectrum’s plant has had the pollution control system, called baghouse technology, in place since the 1990s, and inspections are made daily, according to its website.

Spectrum CEO Craig Barker called the decision to close after 40 years “extraordinarily difficult” but inevitable because it was no longer financially feasible to continue operations.

“Our facility was built to support product demand at the height of art glass movement, but our sales never fully recovered following the Great Recession,” Barker said in a statement posted on the company’s Facebook page. “We have watched our sales dwindle dramatically to only 40 percent of production capacity, while overhead expenses have continued to increase. Our consistently reduced levels of sales simply cannot cover the fixed costs required to operate a facility of our size.”

Responding to EPA inspections added to the private company’s struggles.

“Spectrum Glass Company has operated well within existing environmental guidelines and has been the only stained glass manufacturer to employ baghouse technology on furnace exhaust,” Barker said. “Still, we have already accrued extraordinary, unanticipated expenses since the start of the EPA evaluation and cannot withstand additional investments of an unknown scale for an already faltering business.”

The company is exploring ways to transition its product lines to other manufacturers, he said.

The national Speciality Glass Artists Association said local and federal governments are rushing to judgment and unduly harming glass factories and the entire industry.

The group said in a statement: “While the SGAA does not support excessive emissions we do feel that these companies are being put under excessive duress and should be given more time and money to comply.”

Spectrum’s processing of its sheet glass is unique, trademarked and not used by any other glass manufacturer in the world. Spectrum’s original founders perfected a continuous melt “ribbon” system where thin sheets roll through a series of furnaces, cool and get cut into 4-foot sections. Artists say Spectrum’s glass is uniform, consistent, has fewer bubbles and is easier to work with than sheets produced by other manufacturers that hand roll their glass sheets.

Ruano of Bedrock Industries worries how she’ll stock the dozens of tin boxes filled with the leftover trimmed edge of Spectrum sheet glass, known as mosaic cullet.

“Since 1994, I’ve been buying Spectrum’s mosaic cullet and used it in mosaic art and in the glass tiles and garden art we produce,” she said, standing among dangling dragonflies, koi fish platters and rows of gleaming tile lining her store near Ballard.

Mosaic artists come from all over the Northwest, and order online from Alaska, Hawaii and every other state because very few outlets sell mosaic cullet at Bedrock’s low price, she said. At the height of the glass art craze 10 years ago, Ruano said she purchased eight to 10 tons of mosaic cullet a year from Spectrum; now she’s going through about 3 tons annually.

Ruano said she could keep her mosaic glass prices low because Spectrum is practically her neighbor and the company encourages its scrap glass be recycled. But she no longer afford to do that.

“I don’t think the consumer realizes how good they’ve had it here,” she said. “The affordable glass art available in Seattle is because of Spectrum. Maybe this is the beginning of the end of Seattle’s glass reputation.”

Many glass artists say they’re taking a wait-and-see approach.

“Several of the other glass manufacturers are stepping up to the plate and they say they’re going to try and make their glass smoother,” said Colleen Price, owner of Covenant Art Glass in Everett.

She carries sheets of Spectrum colorful glass. Some with heavy wavy patterns, some translucent and dazzling, line the shelves of her Broadway Avenue shop. She estimates 80 to 90 percent of her sales are for Spectrum products.

Her praise runs high for the company she called a leader in the glass arts community.

“Spectrum glass is predictable, available and the price was affordable,” Price said. “For many reasons it’s been the go-to glass.”

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