Hand-blown glass votives light way to new career

Tuesday, June 21, 2005

Hand-blown glass votives light way to new career
What started out as hobby on track to become $1 million business

By KRISTEN MILLARES BOLT
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER REPORTER

Glassybaby.

It's an odd title for the elegantly curved glass votives produced in a Green Lake studio and retail space, also named glassybaby. But chances are, you've already seen one brightening the table of a Seattle restaurant.


		PHIL H. WEBBER / P-I
	Glass blowers Laura Cowart and Romi Epstein overlay color onto a candle votive at the Green Lake studio of glassybaby. Each piece is hand-finished.

"I learned how to blow glass just to make a glassybaby," said owner Lee Rhodes, who after mastering the shape of the cheerful votive (which is as suited to hold orange juice or flowers as candles), began giving them to friends and family.

Soon she was so inundated with orders that she found herself turning away customers. By 2001, she had converted the garage of her Washington Park home into a studio/salesroom to meet demand.

"We would always give them away as baby presents, but things really got rocking when I started selling them out of my garage," said Rhodes, who is raising a teenager and two preteens while running the business.

In September, she opened up shop in a 4,000-square-foot studio in the Vitamilk building in Green Lake, which she can pressure-wash at will. (Unlike her garage.)

The glassybaby now comes in more than 50 colors, such as pine needle and Seattle sunset, and is dishwasher-safe.

"I never did it with the intention of producing them commercially, but here I am," said Rhodes, 42, a lung-cancer survivor who decided not to produce them herself to save her breath for other things. "Lung cancer and glass blowing are a bad mix."


		PHIL H. WEBBER / P-I
	Glassybabies come in more than 50 colors, such as pine needle and Seattle sunset, and can be used as votives, vases or drinking glasses.

Right now, Rhodes' cadre of glass blowers makes about 80 of the glasses per day, each finished by hand, but she is on track to double production by fall.

She's hoping to break $1 million in sales this year, which is above her conservative estimates but not unthinkable. And for members of the glassybaby clubs (yes, more than one exists), there are seasonal or monthly deliveries of bouquets of glassybaby colors.

And though the 2,000-degree molten glass must be handled by five glass blowers to make each hand-finished glassybaby, Rhodes said the soul of the glassybaby is "simple, simple."