By Peggy Sturdivant

Maria Ruano rolls up the warehouse door to reveal coastal freighters docked on the Ship Canal. On the west side’s loading dock we sit at a café table looking up at the Ballard Bridge, as though it’s the Eiffel Tower. Where are we? At Bedrock Industries’ new location on the Nickerson side of the Ship Canal, just below the Ballard Bridge.

It’s a shame if you don’t know about Seattle’s Bedrock Industries, because as owner Maria Ruano says, “We’re an institution!” If you’ve ever admired a friend’s new kitchen backsplash, the glass curtain in their yard or found a heart-shaped piece of glass of Golden Gardens on Valentine’s Day then you’re already connected by cullet.

By the way, cullet is crushed, recycled glass ready to be re-melted. With the addition of color and various firing techniques Bedrock Industries’ products are as much art as practical. The showroom would be easier to find if the company hadn’t been forced to move twice over the last three years, leaving their longtime home under the Magnolia Bridge in 2014.

“We’ve been an American manufacturer for 25 years,” Ruano says, “Too bad it’s so hard to do business.” Bedrock has been displaced as industrial space has been developed for non-industrial use along Elliott Avenue. Ruano had barely financially survived Bedrock’s 2014 move when she learned last April she would lose her space again, this time to storage units. She was racing against a September move-out deadline, frustrated by slow responses from brokers and losing out to breweries. She saw a For Lease sign as she was crossing the Ballard Bridge. A kitchen supply company had moved its warehouse to Tukwila. Although she’d hoped to be visible along an arterial her beloved company will now be visible from the Ballard Bridge, in a huge Coastal Transportation warehouse.

Coastal Transportation has been sailing freight vessels weekly from Seattle to Southwest Alaska since 1984. They have a terminal in Dutch Harbor, Alaska and the one at 13th Avenue West that’s now providing a home for Bedrock Industries.

Bedrock’s last move took almost three weeks of 16-hour days, the distance was only half a mile but laborious as they moved machinery and truckload after truckload of inventory on palates. Having also bought out the inventory of Woodinville’s Spectrum Glass when they closed, Ruano admits they could keep producing for years, as long as they have a home.

Those who do know Bedrock Industries are devotees, making annual treks under the bridge from Eastern Washington or having products shipped worldwide. “People love us,” Ruano said matter-of-factly. Already open for business again one bin has glass earrings; an entire corner is color selections of tile, in between are beaded curtains and suspended glass orbs. Another display unit has dinnerware and stemware. Walking through the inventory and manufacturing space-to-be Ruana passes kilns suspended on chains, a conveyer belt and forklift. “We hope to be crushing in the next month.” Lifting a glass tile to the light, she said, “Aren’t these pleasing, they’re made from the side windows of Paccar trucks.”

Moving the inventory was one challenge, preparing the space another. “We didn’t even have power when we moved in.” Ruano pointed up to a wall built to divide the cavernous space that also backs shelving up to the rafters. “Look at those beams.” At the loading dock door she used a pulley to transform a windowless corridor into a waterfront panorama, freight vessels in the distance. “Coastal Transportation has been great,” she said.

The last years have been tough for business but Ruano isn’t ready to give up. However she needs her clients to be able to find her, even before there’s a banner visible from the bridge. She’s planning to offer classes and workshop again and hopes to be able to extend the showroom outside. She’s clearly an artist but also a builder, an inventor. Her obsession with glass began in Europe when she saw a beam of light on a counter. She followed the light and found a kid and an old man creating art with marble and concrete. “I thought, I have to make that,” Ruano said, explaining that’s always been about the making.

So she has made her company and re-made it with each move. She’s done custom work and garden shows. She’s weathered the loss of suppliers and industry changes. Throughout she’s stayed committed to 100% recycled material for all products and shipping. In her words, Bedrock Industries has always tried to be a “shining example of a for-profit organization with a total commitment to sustainability, good employment practices, and responsible community service practices.”

For 25 years Ruano has been trekking over from her 1906 Ballard farmhouse to crush, tumble, fire and mold glass into creations that capture light and imagination. “I want it to be permanent,” she says of her new location, off the road but visible from above. She’s been showing Ballard the love on Valentine’s Day for decades, now it’s time to take a turn off of Nickerson and return the favor.

4021 13th Ave. West, Seattle, 206.283.7625, Monday-Sunday 10-6 p.m. www.bedrockindustries.com