It's Christmas in Germany! One of the best things about living here.
We took a train ride through the Thuringer Wald (the Thuringien forest, just north of Bavaria) to a little town called Lauscha. Glass was invented four millenia ago in Egypt, but no one was able to get a perfectly clear glass with no bubbles in it until Christoph Müller and Hans Greiner set up Lauscha's first glassworks in 1597. They started a long tradition of glass blowing in Lauscha, and the region, along with the city of Jena (not far away) is still known for its optics industry.
The Müller and Greiner families settled down, and soon there were too many people with the same family names. So people started to be called by their relation to others. In 1849 the son of Vetter Greiner, named Elias Greiner-Vetters-Sohn, recieved a patent on "artificial semi-precious and precious stone balls", in other words, the marble. By 1853 he had built a new foundry to produce specialized glass and artificial eyes.
In 1846, a picture of Queen Victoria's Christmas tree, decorated with glass ornaments from her husband Prince Albert's native Germany, was shown in a London newspaper. (Prince Albert's hometown, Coburg, is in northern Bavaria ,not far from Lauscha) Lauscha then began to export its products throughout Europe. In 1847, Hans Greiner (a descendent of the Hans Greiner who had established Lauscha's first glassworks) began producing glass ornaments in the shape of fruits and nuts. Eventually, hand-blown glass balls were made in a unique process using molds. The ornaments were made to look silvery by using mercury or lead on the inside surface. Later, a special compound of silver nitrate and sugar water was used. In the 1880s, American F. W. Woolworth discovered Lauscha's Christmas ornaments during a visit to Germany. He made a fortune by importing the German glass ornaments to America.
Back in 1895, a fire destroyed the foundry, but a new one was built, and the rods and tubes produced in the new foundry supplied the booming home industry in town, where glass beads and small objects of art art were made with torches. Today, there are still about 20 small glass-blowing firms active in Lauscha that produce ornaments. One of the producers is Krebs Glas Lauscha, a part of the Krebs family which is now one of the largest producers of glass ornaments worldwide.
A tiny part of the production of glass balls in Lauscha is yours truly. (Production total: 1)
Glass melts at 1500°C( 2732°F). Glass rods are still made by two master glass makers, who, with a glassblower's pipe, draw a blob of colored glass out of the oven, and between them draw it out to the desired thickness. This is done when the guy with the far end walks at a steady pace away from the guy blowing on the pipe. The diameter of the tube is determined by the speed at which the guy at the far end walks away. It takes two masters to draw the glass out evenly so that it is a uniform thickness and can reach a length of 25 meters.
We came back with some works of art for ourselves.
The most famous of the nativity scenes in Bamberg is a wooden relief by Veit Stoß made in 1523 out of linden wood. It is unusual for its column in the middle. It represents either the birth of Jesus (according to Pseudo-Bonaventura, Mary gave birth while leaning on a column and without pain), or the scourging of Jesus. In the wings are scenes of the flight into Egypt, the birth of Mary, the visit from the 3 kings, and the12-year old Jesus in the Temple.
It has wooden figures with clothes made in the country style of the region . . .
