MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
Neon signs used to line highways and Main Streets across America. Now, tradespeople who make and service those signs are dwindling, even as their nostalgic glow has become increasingly popular with museumgoers and collectors. Still, a few signmakers are keeping the tradition alive. Nick Swartsell of member station WVXU reports.
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NICK SWARTSELL, BYLINE: Tom Wartman is standing over a rectangle of blue flame and bending glass in his hands.
TOM WARTMAN: This fire is about 1,500 degrees. Now I'll just kind of bring it around gently and just kind of line it up with my pattern here.
SWARTSELL: He deftly moves the glass tube from the flame to check it against a paper pattern for a neon clock face. It's right on the money.
WARTMAN: And I'll let it just sit here for about 10 or 12 seconds.
SWARTSELL: Wartman is the director of Neonworks, a shop based in Cincinnati. He's been bending glass and doing just about everything else related to neon signs for decades. It runs in the family.
WARTMAN: I grew up around a neon shop. This is what my dad did. So kind of like my first job when I was 12 or 13 was sweeping the floor at his shop.
SWARTSELL: Large windows separate the shop from a cavernous room full of giant neon signs. That's the American Sign Museum, which saw 60,000 visitors last year. It's not the only one. The National Neon Sign Museum in The Dalles, Oregon, is popular, too. Founder David Benko says, as interest in neon signs has gone up, so have prices and the number of pieces going to private collections.
DAVID BENKO: Now, you can go to an auction and, instead of seeing a sign sell for maybe 5,000 or 10,000, there might be a sign for 100,000 or 150,000 or more.
SWARTSELL: Benko says that makes the work of both museums and America's remaining glass-benders all the more important in keeping the art of neon alive.
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SWARTSELL: Back at the shop in Cincinnati, Wartman is finishing up his neon clock face.
WARTMAN: Once we vacuum all the air out of the tube, we put the gas in - either neon gas, which lights up reddish-orange, or the blue gas, which is argon with mercury in it, which lights up blue.
SWARTSELL: He estimates he's one of the last people in the region with the specialized skills needed to create the signs.
WARTMAN: We're the only functioning neon shop within a hundred-mile radius of Cincinnati. That might not be exact, but it feels like that with all the people that come to our shop and - you know, very happy to find us.
SWARTSELL: And he has an apprentice, so he can pass his knowledge on to the next generation. Twenty-six-year-old Bing Reising found a love for neon early. The Dairy Queen he went to as a kid with his family in his native Cleveland had a vintage neon sign.
BING REISING: And it was just, like, really cool. I loved looking at it. I remember being a kid, zoning out, staring at these signs.
SWARTSELL: Reising got his first neon sign when he was 11 and has been collecting ever since. It was all just a hobby until the owner of a neon shop saw his fascination with the signs and offered to teach him the trade. He's been working with Wartman now for about a year. He says he's grateful for the chance to learn from someone so skilled.
REISING: Tom is so good at glass. He's so quick at it. It's intimidating, sure, but it's also, like, fuel to the fire of, like, oh, I want to get there, too.
SWARTSELL: Leaders with Cincinnati's American Sign Museum say it may offer classes in glass-bending in the future. In the meantime, folks like Wartman and Reising are doing their part to keep the neon lights on.
For NPR News, I'm Nick Swartsell in Cincinnati.
(SOUNDBITE OF ENHYPEN'S "I NEED THE LIGHT") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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