Jan. 7—The abandoned Westmoreland Glass Co. plant in Hempfield has deteriorated into a shadow of its former self, but the varieties of glassware produced at the site for nearly a century have not lost their luster for collectors and local historians.

“They made high quality white milk glass, and they painted just about everything they did,” says Ken Kosoglow of Claridge, a board member of the Westmoreland Glass Collectors’ Club. “It was all hand-painted. That was the big thing.”

Constructed in 1889 along the railroad tracks in the village of Grapeville, the glass plant complex through the years turned out everything from mustard containers and candy dishes to wedding bowls featuring a Roses and Bows pattern.

Covered dishes shaped in the image of various animals were prominent in the Westmoreland Glass product catalog. Now prized as collectibles, the pieces at one time were commonly found in local homes.

“I grew up two miles away from the factory,” said Kosoglow’s wife and fellow collector, Jackie. “My mother had them on the dining room table.

“Everybody had a white chicken. It had a hand-painted comb; that was very popular. They also made foxes and eagles and cats and swans, and a great big bulldog doorstop.”

The nearby Jeannette Area Historical Society has preserved several examples of Westmoreland glass, including a lidded dish in an English hobnail pattern. The dish features a swirled combination of purple, blue and white “slag glass,” which was left over at the end of the working day.

Also in the society’s collection are images of the plant during its mid-20th century heyday and following its 1984 demise, along with accounts of its history and its production processes.

Offshoot of Ohio company

An article submitted by J.H. Brainard, president of the company beginning in 1953, mentions one of its early recipes for glass that included sand, soda, lime, nitre and arsenic. Manganese and “powdered blue” also were included, he said, “as decolorizers to obtain clear crystal glass.”

The glass mixture initially was heated to 2,500 degrees and then brought down to about 1,800 degrees for shaping. Workers in the early decades of the 20th century could turn out between 700 and 1,000 pieces of glass daily, including novelty candy containers shaped like airplanes, automobiles, the Liberty Bell or silent film comedian Charlie Chaplin.

The glass company came to Grapeville as an offshoot of the Ohio-based East Liverpool Specialty Company. The attractions of the Grapeville location included frontage along Pennsylvania Railroad tracks and a local supply of natural gas.

The company is said to have offered natural gas for home heating as an incentive to attract workers.

At one time, the plant employed more than 350 people and occupied a complex encompassing 138,000 square feet. The workforce included glass engravers, cutters, master mechanics, die makers and painters.

Brothers Charles and George West, who had operated a dry goods store in East Liberty, took over management of the company, with financial backing from Ira Brainard.

Fulfilling Charles West’s goal of producing more upscale items, the company issued the Keystone line of handmade tableware beginning in 1910. But, according to J.H. Brainard, there was a parting of ways between the West brothers that resulted in George selling his interest to Charles and to Brainard’s grandfather, Ira.

Generations of the Brainard family assumed sole leadership of the glass plant, beginning in 1937. Ira’s son, James J., was president until his death in 1953. Then J.H., who had served as treasurer, took on the added role of president.

A gift shop, added to the plant in the early 1960s, provided a convenient way for the company to test-market new glassware designs.

Ken Kosoglow notes the company’s ruby-colored glassware was particularly popular with customers and is of equal interest to collectors. Some recipes for the glass called for adding gold to the mix, he says.

“That gave it that real dark blood-red color,” he says.

‘We had a great crew’

Cindy Peltier of Plum was among those who worked on ruby glassware at the Grapeville plant. She worked as a painter there from 1975 until its 1984 closure.

She found it was a profitable way to use the artistic skills she’d developed in high school and had honed at a previous job. She was following in the footsteps of two relatives who had worked as artists at the plant — her grandmother Mary Breinig Peltier and great uncle Albert Breinig.

“Mostly, I painted the ruby floral line, which was a crystal glass,” Cindy Peltier recalls. “Another painter would paint the ruby (pigment) on it, it would be fired and then I would paint a raised white rose on it.

“It was considered skilled labor. Not everybody could sit there and paint for eight hours. I thought I was going to sit there and paint for the rest of my life.”

Eventually, Peltier says, the company reduced costs by using glass that already was ruby-colored, eliminating the step of applying ruby pigment. Other reductions involved layoffs, but Peltier says her versatile skills allowed her to remain on the payroll, switching among different production lines in the decorating department.

Peltier confirmed reports of another cost-cutting move. Decals were applied to decorate some of the glassware, replacing the time-honored hand-painting.

In 1981, the company was sold to David Grossman, a St. Louis, Mo. distributor and importer. Grossman tried new colors and a limited-edition series that failed. So, glassware production came to an end on Jan. 8, 1984.

Most of the plant’s molds, glass, furniture and catalogs were sold at auction.

After the plant was shuttered, it passed through the hands of multiple owners and was ravaged by two major fires — one in 1996 that destroyed two-thirds of the complex and another in 1998 that ruined the main portion of the plant, a three-story brick building with two smokestacks.

“It’s sad that it’s gone,” says Peltier of the plant. “We had a great crew. A lot of us would hang out together after work.”

Peltier went on to work at area furniture stores until she recently retired. As a reminder of the first part of her working life, she has a shelf lined with some of the ruby glassware she helped to create.

She has spotted some additional pieces in circulation with painted designs she recognized as her handiwork.

Even without the initials she and her co-workers left on some of the glassware, she says, the various styles of painting are apparent to her.

“I can look at any five of them and tell you whose they were,” Peltier says. “It was like your signature.”

Jeff Himler is a Tribune-Review staff writer. You can contact Jeff by email at jhimler@triblive.com or via Twitter .