Blenko No. 7921: The Glass Frog That Holds Flowers

By Matthew Partsch · Owl and Twig Vintage · October 23, 2026

A ten-inch glass toad, mouth open to the ceiling, sits on a collector's shelf among his other glass. It came out of a West Virginia factory best known for decanters and floor vases, from a designer who trained in architecture and once shaped molds from bent coat hangers.

A toad with its mouth open

Light comes through it like cranberry juice held to a window. The body is thick and lumpy, studded with blisters along the back, two bulbous eyes set high on the head, and a pair of folded hind legs pressed against the flanks. The head tilts back. The mouth is the opening. Stems go in where the frog would swallow a fly.

Blenko Glass Company of Milton, West Virginia, made this form under design number 7921. Replacements, Ltd., the Greensboro china and crystal matching service, lists it as the "#7921 10-inch Frog/Toad Vase," measures its example at 9 1/2 inches, and marks it discontinued. Sellers attach Don Shepherd's name to it, and one buyer's eBay feedback describes a blue example as a one-year-only piece.

What the number 7921 tells you

Blenko's design numbers are dates in disguise. From 1953 on, the first two digits record the year a design entered the line, and the last two count its place among that year's new designs. So 7921 reads as the twenty-first new design of 1979.

A letter suffix, when there is one, marks size: S, M and L for small, medium and large. The frog carries none in the records found for this guide. Replacements uses an internal piece code, V79214, that is its own inventory shorthand rather than a Blenko marking.

The architect behind the frog

Don Shepherd held the Blenko design post from the mid-1970s until April 1988. The company's own designer history gives his start as 1975; the independent Blenko Project survey gives 1974. Either way, a 1979 number falls squarely inside his years, and a Blenko Museum designer record credits him with every design in the line carrying a 75 through 89 prefix.

He was a Californian, trained at the California School of Fine Arts, and he came to glass by way of the architectural arts. Blenko's history notes he experimented with unconventional mold materials, bent coat hangers included. He designed the first West Virginia Day birthday piece in 1980. In 1981 he co-built a specialized annealing oven with the sculptor Howard Ben Tré. After Blenko he consulted for Herman Miller. He died in 2002.

The frog belongs to a Blenko habit older than Shepherd. The glass historian Damon Crain, writing in the Journal of Antiques and Collectibles, described the work of Shepherd's predecessor Wayne Husted as "much more extreme and sculptural, playing up non-functional designs." A toad that holds flowers is the same instinct turned toward wit.

How to tell a real one

• Measure it. The documented example stands 9 1/2 inches; Blenko listed it as a 10-inch form. A frog well off that height is a different object.
• Look at the open mouth. The 7921 is a vase, so the head tips back and the opening sits where the mouth would be. A solid glass frog figurine is not this design.
• Run a hand over the back. Raised blisters, prominent eyes and folded hind legs are formed in the glass itself.
• Check for a label. Blenko marked most pieces with a paper sticker rather than a signature, and most stickers have long since washed away. An unlabeled frog can still be genuine. A surviving label, read against the table below, helps date it.
• Turn it over. Blenko bases typically show wear from decades of shelf contact. A bottom with no marks at all deserves a second look.

Blenko has marked its glass in more ways than most factories. The company's own sticker guide dates its four main labels: the foil hand from 1930 to 1982, the Block B from 1982 to 1999, a clear hand label with Made in USA from 1999 to 2000, and the oval from 2000 on. Collectors date the rest:

Mark	Years	Notes
Silver foil hand sticker	1930 to 1982	The classic hand-shaped Blenko Handcraft label. Leftover stock went on glass until it ran out in 1982.
Williamsburg Restoration mark	1936 to 1966	Only on the Williamsburg reproduction glassware, until Royal Leerdam took the contract.
Paper hand label	World War II	A rough paper version of the hand, used briefly during wartime shortages.
Hand-signed Blenko	Early 1958	Etched by William Blenko Jr. on 1958 designs.
Sandblasted Blenko	Spring 1958 to summer 1961	A large sandblasted stamp on the glass itself.
Designer's Studio Series hang tag	1980	Only on that year's Designer's Studio Series.
Block B sticker	1982 to 1999	Designed by John Nickerson: an orange ball for the hot glass and a line through the B for the blowpipe.
Clear hand label, Made in USA	1999 to 2000	The hand outline printed on a clear sticker, with Made in USA beneath it.
Blenko 2000 sticker	2000 to present	The hand returns inside a silver oval, with Made in USA; one version adds the website and phone number.
Small sandblasted signature	July 2001 to present	Includes the year of manufacture.

The frog wears the foil hand. It carries no Made in USA line, which rules out every label used from 1999 on. The foil hand ran out in 1982, so the label points to 1982 or earlier, in line with the 1979 design number. Labels can move between pieces, so a label supports a date without proving one. Here the two agree.

The look-alikes

What you're looking at	How to tell it apart
Glass flower frogs	The name collides. A flower frog is a weighted, perforated block that sits inside a vase and holds stems upright. It has nothing to do with the animal and is rarely shaped like one.
Solid glass frog figurines	Paperweight-style frogs from Murano, Viking and many gift-shop makers are solid or nearly so, with no opening. They are ornaments, not vases.
Other West Virginia animal glass	Viking of New Martinsville turned out birds and animals in strong colors through the same decades. Those pieces are smaller and solid; see the Viking glass guide for its marks.
Blenko's other figural vases	Blenko also made fish-shaped vases and, in later decades, small glass critters. Check the form against the frog's open, upturned mouth before trusting a seller's number.

What the Blenko frog sells for

More than most Blenko. A recent eBay snapshot compiled by the price aggregator MarketplaceIQ puts typical vintage Blenko between $25 and $250. The 7921 trades at two to four times the top of that range, and every completed sale on record has cleared $480.

Seven sold listings on eBay, from November 2024 through April 2026, show the spread. The lowest, $486, went to a clear crystal frog. The highest, $1,079, went to a smoky plum example billed as the large 10-inch size. Prices before shipping:

Color, as listed or pictured	Sold for	Date
Smoky plum, "Large 10-inch Size"	$1,079	April 5, 2026
Red shading to yellow, the effect Blenko calls Tangerine	$950	March 10, 2026
Blue, with original Blenko sticker	$898	February 15, 2025
Red	$849.15	March 5, 2026
Teal blue	$629	May 24, 2025
Amber, listed as Don Shepherd	$536.99	November 13, 2024
Clear crystal	$486	February 22, 2025

These are completed eBay sales from a sold-items search, supplied to Owl and Twig in October 2026. eBay hides the individual listings once they close, so condition and any accepted offers below the shown price could not be checked. Three things stand out. The three sales dated 2026 all cleared $840. Saturated and shaded colors beat clear glass by roughly two to one. And a surviving sticker appears on one of the strongest results.

The ruby question

The early records suggested a blue frog. Replacements catalogs a sapphire example. One buyer's eBay feedback calls a blue one a one-year-only piece. Another listing offers it in cobalt.

The sales say otherwise. Since late 2024 the 7921 has changed hands in crystal, amber, teal, blue, red, Tangerine and a smoky plum. Blenko has made more than eighty line colors, its term for a color kept in production for at least a calendar year. The blue records may even describe one color: Blenko says its Persian, Sapphire and Cobalt are different saturations of the same base. A red frog sold in March for $849.15.

So the ruby frog on this collector's shelf has company: seven colors in all, each selling for the price of a good armchair. The 1979 catalog would confirm which colors came first. The market has already decided what they are worth.