Smashed up glass makes for unusual gifts

St. Louis Post Dispatch - Wednesday, December 26, 2007
By Gail Appleson

St. Louis law firm Thompson Coburn LLP gives its some 400 employees small gifts every holiday season, and this year Angela Schaefer, human resource manager, looked for a collectible that says something about being kind to the earth.

"In my personal life I've been trying to go green, so I thought wouldn't it be great if we could find ornaments made from recycled materials," said Schaefer, whose department is involved in planning the firm's annual party.

So Schaefer searched the Internet and found a Chesterfield company called The Smashed Chefs that makes gifts, jewelry and dining pieces from thrown-away glass containers including beer, wine and distilled spirits bottles.

The end result of Schaefer's quest were snowmen ornaments looped with Thompson Coburn ribbons.

"It met our goal of working with a local company and providing a recycled gift," she said. "We've heard nothing but wonderful things."

While The Smashed Chefs is still a small company operating out of a cramped 800-square-foot office and manufacturing space, its website, thesmashedchefs.com, is drawing attention from firms like Thompson Coburn as well as individuals who want personal, one-of-a kind gifts.

Doug Nash, owner and self-described "chief bottle washer," said he has even made 120 ornaments from Old El Paso salsa jars for a General Mills packing department in Minneapolis. Another recent project was the creation of business card holders that the city of Chesterfield gave to a group of delegates from China. The etched holders were made from seven-ounce Bud Light bottles.

But Nash, 65, admits that reshaping beer bottles in a kiln wasn't exactly his lifelong dream.

He's a chemical engineer who kept finding himself at companies that were closing plants and cutting personnel.

"I was downsized out of corporate America," said Nash, who finally agreed to take early retirement, even though he was far from ready to stop working.

So he decided to become an entrepreneur. He and his wife, Sandy, bought The Smashed Chefs in 2004 from two women who started the business in one of their basements. The women were making about 22 different products selling mostly through gift shops and specialty retailers.

Although he had never used a kiln, Nash was confident he could learn.

"I've been around manufacturing my whole life. I'm mechanically handy," he said, "I'm an old farm boy."

Now The Smashed Chefs makes 115 different items, has three employees counting Nash and subcontracts with Clarie Berger, who personalizes the glass with etchings. Although the products can be purchased at the company's office in Chesterfield Valley, the Internet is Smashed Chefs' chief outlet.

In the past three years Nash has become comfortable at the kiln, softening and reshaping glass to give it new life as a commemorative plaque, serving bowl or something totally unexpected. He said he cut the bottoms off 400 bottles to form the Thompson Coburn ornaments that were embellished with colored shards to create snowmen.

The original owners got much of their inventory through "dumpster diving," said Nash. But he wants to find more interesting shapes and colors and has been trying to get restaurants and liquor stores to save empty bottles for his company.

Sometimes the bottles come from unexpected forays.

For example, one of his employees, Margie Sieckmann, went to a Schnucks store to buy beer to serve at a pinochle game at her home when she saw a representative from Webster Groves restaurant Robust holding a wine tasting. She had a chat with him that resulted in an inventory of 36 cases of empty bottles for The Smashed Chefs.

But not all the glass comes from disposed bottles. Customers who have saved a wine bottle from a special occasion or have kept bottles for sentimental reasons will bring them in to be reshaped. Two Illinois sisters, for example, found two one-gallon glass jugs in their parents' home that they had remembered as little girls. So Nash reshaped them into wall plaques, and each daughter now has one hanging in her kitchen.

Another customer brought in a wine bottle that her parents saved from a trip to Italy. She had Nash reshape it for a 35th anniversary present etched with the date. Unfortunately, she gave Nash her boyfriend's birthday instead of her parents' anniversary. Luckily Berger was able to re-etch the bottle.

At Thompson Coburn, Schaefer's staff was so impressed with the ornaments that they got her a gift from The Smashed Chefs too. It's a business card holder made from a melted Bud Light bottle and etched with her name.

"It's on my desk right now," she said. "It's very unique."

gappleson@post-dispatch.com | 314-340-8331