Built upon a tradition of pride in craftsmanship and service, Susquehanna Glass has been in the business of making things personal since 1910. It all began when Albert Roye installed his first glass cutting machine in a small shed behind his house and opened the  Susquehanna Glass Factory Store. This launched a business that would continue for three generations.
Walt Rowen, grandson of Walter Roye, serves as CEO and partner Chad Yaw as President. Together, they hope to take Susquehanna Glass Co well into the next 100 years of a tradition that combines old world craftsmanship, modern manufacturing technologies and an unqualified attention to customer service and satisfaction.
Today, Susquehanna Glass provides products and services to some of America’s premier retailers and companies, including Williams Sonoma, Lenox, Riedel, Restoration Hardware, David’s Bridal and the National Cathedral to name just a few.
If it’s a high quality product and it’s personalized, there’s a good chance it came from a 100 year old company in Columbia, Pennsylvania.
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As a quality decorator of glassware, our techniques include 4 processes.
Hand Cutting
Master glass artisans painstakingly hand cut facets into finished glass pieces by pressing them against a large, rotating, belt-driven Carborundum wheel creating beautiful hand cut patterns. This free-hand craftsmanship makes each piece a true original. Glass is cut on the opposite side of the piece, so cutters are looking through the glass as they cut. The more pattern cut into the glass, the more difficult to see. Some pieces are then hand polished, restoring the clarity and shine to the cut glass.
Sand Blasting or Deep Etch
Etching is a method to produce frosted designs on the surface of glass, carve a design deep into glass or create a delicate shaded image on glass. Glass etching is a four-step process: your design is printed on a special rubber mask which is then exposed to ultraviolet light creating a negative mask or resist. This resist mask is then applied, by hand, to the surface of the piece you chose to personalize and then blasted using high pressure silicate, to create an even, deeply etched image. Our technicians are able to maintain a crisp, sharp image, even when pushing to a depth of .060” in a variety of materials, including: glass, crystal, ceramic, metals and more.
Screen Printing
The process begins with your art work or design, replicated on a screen of fine mesh. The design is exposed to Ultraviolet light, creating blank or open areas in the ink-blocking stencil on the mesh. A squeegee is moved across the screen stencil, forcing ink past the threads of the open areas in the woven mesh. Each piece is done by hand! For multi-color designs, we do this multiple times, starting with the lightest color and moving up to the darkest. Silk Screening process can be applied to glass, crystal, ceramic, plastics, metal or wood. Screen printing is an inexpensive decorating process, available in color, which makes it great for large events, give-a-ways and ad specialty items.
Engraving
Engraving is the practice of incising a design on to a hard surface, by cutting grooves into it to personalize or embellish the item by using a cutting tool called a burin. Modern technology uses handles which resemble burins on pneumatic pistons that drive the point much like a jackhammer, but at speeds up to 15,000 strokes per minute,
The result is the ability to do a wide variety of materials including metal, crystal, plastic or glass in a variety of shapes: flat metal plates, jewelry of different shapes and sizes, as well as cylindrical items such as mugs and champagne flutes.
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