Wellsboro Glass Historical Association

Wellsboro Glass Historical Association

Preserving History

In January 2021 a group of passionate and creative folks founded the Wellsboro Glass Historical Association. We seek to build community pride and a deeper understanding of Wellsboro’s important role in glass manufacturing. The goal of our group is to acquire, preserve and present this history and its associated artifacts. The ultimate goal of the WGHA is to operate a museum which will house the 2 ribbon machines currently in storage, as well as all of the items that have been donated. Our hope is to educate the general public about the important contributions Wellsboro PA made to glass manufacturing history, and encourage the next generation of innovators to consider their own creative potential.

The Town that Saved Christmas

Photos of WWII era ornaments from “SHINY-BRITE: America’s Most Nostalgic Christmas Ornaments” by C. Runge Jr., originally published in the December 2013 Busy Bee Trader.

Starting in the 1880s, F.W. Woolworth imported glass ornaments from Lauscha, Germany to stock in his stores throughout the northeast. By the 1930s, 95% of the ornaments on American trees came from Germany. By 1937 the actions of an increasingly aggressive Nazi Germany threatened to disrupt the supply of imports.

Fearing the loss of the income from these extremely popular Christmas decorations, Woolworth suppliers Max Eckardt and Bill Thompson visited Corning Glass Works in Wellsboro to see if they were willing and able to modify the ribbon machine to create glass Christmas balls. Edward Leibig, Wellsboro’s CGW plant manager accepted the challenge. Wellsboro’s employees created and installed new molds and in 1939, the first million glass ornaments rolled off the line.

These ornaments were originally only clear glass. They were shipped to Eckardt’s plant in New Jersey where they were painted in plain red, green, silver, gold, and blue and sold under the name “Shiny Brite.”

Christmas ornament suppliers including George Franke, Rauch, Krebs Brothers and others were soon contracting with CGW as well.

In 1940, Corning Glass Works purchased silvering and lacquering (S + L) machines, which allowed an operator to set up a rack of bulbs and spray a shiny silver nitrate solution inside each blank. The rack was then tipped to drain the blanks, and their exterior was coated with a transparent colored lacquer.

With this addition, the Wellsboro facility was able to make finished glass ornaments, and produced 40 million that year.