IN THE NEWS

While watching the Pittsburgh-Denver game, L.E. Smith Glass Company President and CEO William A. Kelman got an idea to design a handcrafted glass football trophy similar to the Super Bowl Trophy. He made a call to the plant manager and suggested they make a replica. Steve Fenstermacher, a master craftsman for Smith Glass quickly went to work on the project and came up with a prototype made from two separate hand crafted blown glass pieces.

Fenstermacher started with a ball of glass and had molded it into a free formed glass football and then created a pedestal to place it on. Next, Peter O’Rourke, a local glasscutter who has trained at Waterford and a former Lenox employee, was called upon to do the detail work, cutting the seams into the glass football.

The replica Super Bowl trophy soon became a focal point and object of many photo opportunities, when Kelman took it along with him to an Allegheny conference dinner held recently in Pittsburgh. The trophy was placed on the buffet table at the Robert Burns Night during a meeting of the British American Council.

The trophy debut at the dinner sparked even more interest when a number of organization and business leaders requested that the item be made available for purchase. While on display at the dinner, the trophy also attracted attention of a local television station. WTAE sent a reporter and cameraman to the Mount Pleasant to inquire about the one-of-a-kind, Steeler memorabilia, work of art.

As a result, Kelman has since turned the prototype trophy over to the customer service department of Smith for further development. The look of the piece will be refined and in the future a limited quantity edition will be produced. Each individually had crafted piece will be signed and numbered.

“We have the best crafters in the county here at Smith Glass,” state Kelman, who praised L.E. Smith Glass Company for producing top quality glass products.

“We pride ourselves in making timeless pieces, created one at a time,” added Kelman.

Kelman purchase L.E. Smith Glass Company, in an eleventh hour bid to save it while in receivership, in late 2004. Since then, Kelman has been making improvements and working to ensure that the plant will be up and running full by it’s 2007 centennial. Smith Glass, renown for its hand molded glass products, is the only remaining American glass manufacturer of its size in existence.