An short ode to guys with the b—s to take it on the chin.

Yesterday I promised a discussion of the Values History of Bullseye and started with mention of some of the old staples: ingenuity, candor, frugality etc. etc. – the diet that many so-called “Americans” were raised on in the ‘50s.

But first, a quick detour North.

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Recycling values. In the Beginning (1973) Bullseye glass was made of recycled bottle cullet. Thirty-five years later, a lot has changed. And a lot has not.

If you happened to grow up in America in the 1950’s as I did, you’re probably familiar with the self-congratulatory litany of virtues we were raised to believe were uniquely (US) American: inventiveness (aka “Yankee Ingenuity”), self-sufficiency, frugality, honesty, candor – all the Honest Abe stuff we truly believed contrasted us to “Old Europe” (even before a moron among us put a name to our arrogance).

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BEFORE: Ray Ahlgren & Dan Schwoerer, 1973.

After 33 years in business, Bullseye looks a lot different from the outside. But the soul is the same. So now, finally, I get around to the point of this first week of blogs: who we are, who Bullseye is.

Who we are is who we’ve always been: a slightly eccentric little factory driven by people with a lot of energy, passion about glass, some oddball ideas and a commitment to learning. In a serious, relatively professional way.
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In response to my story yesterday about Bullseye’s beginnings, I got this email from Linda Steider:

“I used to bring my students from the gorge to tour the factory & especially loved it when our tour guide would point out the old beam that was left in place from when the factory was being built around the houses without tearing them down first. Is the beam still there?”

Linda’s question sent me back to the archives for this tour of THE YEAR WE BUILT THE NEW FACTORY OVER THE OLD ONE.

The first Bullseye “factory” was a little frame house in a Southeast Portland neighborhood called Garlic Gulch. As the company grew - and the neighbors evacuated, the guys would buy the house next door, until they owned 5 or 6 shacks cobbled together with corrugated metal and duct tape.
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…MAYBE SOMEBODY WILL BUY IT. Making stringer, circa 1983: nail posts onto board, put board on potter’s wheel, gather glass from furnace, turn on wheel…

In Bullseye’s second decade, the 1980s and early 1990s, the founders’ obsession with fusing continued to drain the company’s resources. There was almost no market for their dream.
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