Wayne Husted was born in Hudson, New York, in 1927. His father was a Methodist minister and was one of four siblings.

Wayne graduated from Hudson High School in June 1945. He had a desire to draw in class, thus ignoring the lectures. Therefore his teachers considered him a somewhat troublesome pupil. He was sent to the principal’s office more than once with a note typically reading “Wayne Husted would rather draw than study his (Algebra), so I am expelling him from my class room.”

Wayne joined the U.S. Coast Guard after graduation. Although he passed the exams for officer’s training, he opted to leave the service to attend college. His family had decided that Wayne was the “chosen” of the siblings to follow his father and become a preacher. Wayne did not personally “feel the calling”, and enrolled in a pre-med course at Mohawk College in Utica, New York. After a year, which included night courses in painting and sculpture, he transferred to Geneva College in Beaver Falls, Pennsylvania. While he was on summer vacation, a high school guidance counselor led him to Alfred University. The design department only accepted about forty new freshmen out of about 1,500 applications. Wayne’s father gathered up a portfolio of Wayne’s work and drove eight hours for a meeting with Charles Harder, who was the head of Alfred’s Ceramic Design Department. The fortunate coincidence turned out to be that Alfred actually preferred students without prior formal art training. Wayne then spent the next five years (1947-1952) at Alfred. The generation of classes behind Wayne included Winslow Anderson and Glidden Parker. Wayne graduated with a double undergraduate degree (a B.A. in English and a B.F.A. in Industrial Ceramic Design), followed by an M.F.A. in Industrial Ceramic Design.

Wayne began at Blenko on April Fool’s Day in 1952. Upon meeting William Blenko, Sr., Wayne told him that he had no experience with glass. William’s response, typical of his personality, was, “Great! Then you’ll try things you wouldn’t try if you knew something about glass.”

Each year for ten years at Blenko, Wayne came up with fifty to sixty designs. One of Wayne’s designs won an award in the Corning Museum competition and was featured in “Glass 1959”. Wayne became known for the huge bottles and decanters that came to typify the glass of that period.

Wayne remained at Blenko until January 1963 after designing the 1963 line. After thirty six years, Wayne returned to Blenko in 1999.

Wayne’s work is highly collectible, as noted by Leslie Pina, Ph.D.: “Collectors have sought after Wayne Husted’s designs more than any other.” Leslie is the author of three books on Blenko Glass.

Wayne’s Olana glass pieces are three-dimensional paintings in glass. Each piece is an abstract composition with the added dimensions of space and refracted light.

Unlike studio glass facilities, Blenko is the only factory in America that melts large pots of glass simultaneously. And each of the many Blenko glass pots offers a singular rich, transparent, and liquid color. This allows for a much freer and broader approach to creating in glass than that of studio glass artists who are limited to applying colored crayon like rods to crystal. The liquid glassiness of the colors of the Olana line is the result of that discovery and the challenge as well as the opportunity that it presents.