Chezch glass bead manufacturing.
My wife Jme and I have been documenting glass bead and button production in the Czech Republic for years, if not decades, by traveling to the region and going to various factories to buy direct from the manufacturers themselves. In so doing, we have met the owners, the managers, the workers, the sales staff of all the factories in Jablonec and surrounding area where glass production has been in operation for hundreds of years, as well as glassware, chandeliers, Christmas ornaments, beads, buttons, cabochons and other miscellaneous glass products, such as perfume bottles, nail files and hat pins.. First it was the Austrian Empire, in Bohemia province, until the end of WW1 when it became Czechoslavakia, and then Sedutenland when annexed by Hitler during WW2, back to Czechoslovakia after Germany lost the war in 1945, eventually controlled and oppressed by the Soviet Union after their invasion in 1968 and now it is independent Czech Republic After the velvet revolution in 1987. Most of the glass bead and button production is in small family owned and operated cottage industry pressing huts, either located in a free standing building on the land behind the main house, or located in the main house, with the pressing machinery in a back room, and the tumblers (glorified cement mixers endlessly tumbling the pressed beads using different coursenesses of sand and grit to polish the beads) in the basement. The sales rooms and stockrooms were in front rooms for customers to come see and buy the stock, and the patio outside the front door to stock all the glass rods used to make the beads. Around all that was the living quarters for the family. old World factories with manually operated machinery or if the family was successful, electric run, maybe with one or two workers employed from outside the family. An exception to the cottage industry pressing hut and the giant communist era factory is the fire Polish faceting factory like Fiboex, which started small on a goat farm, and grew to the largest faceting factory in Jablonec, with row after row of faceting machines operated by non Czech workers, and conveyor belts of trays of faceted beads being run through large furnaces at high temperatures that heat Polish the cut facets. Noisy, damp, a more new world factory environment.Although now the working conditions are regulated by the government, it is a member of the European Union, it is still pretty much unregulated, the pressers dress in t-shirts, shorts, sandals, so hot shards of molten glass can burn them , if drops escape the machinery, no safety glasses to protect their eyes. But, they are paid a living wage, there are breaks during the day, no children toiling like third world slave labor. But the conditions are somewhat hard, poor lighting, noisy, damp, moist air, hot. It’s a factory After all. For the most part the owner and his immediate family are working in this environment, willingly, as are the workers they employ. In the larger factories which came about during the communist era of Czechoslovakia when the government nationalized most of the small cottage industry glassworks, such as Jablonex, Ornela and ZeleznoBrodskieSklo, with thousands of workers, the working conditions were harsher, wages were not of a living standard, the hours long, but the workers were given free housing, which were cheap stripped apartments, very squalid, ghetto style. Bad plumbing, bad heating in winter, poor cooling in summer. It was the worst solialist/communist system that they suffered under for decades, but everyone was equal in their misery except the elite politicians. During that time the beads and buttons were not being produced in a humane or ethical manner, even made by forced prison labor in a state run prison located outside of Jablonec. And in the west we did not know it. It was only after the velvet revolution of 1987 when the Soviet Union collapsed and Czechoslovakia was freed from communist control and the Czech Republic became independent did things improve. Now the glass industry is being run as first described. Humanely, with living wages, and better working conditions. Hundreds of self employed lampworkers sprung up and worked willingly for long hours making beads, in all the villages in the area. Piecemeal work was scattered to people living in the villages like bead stringing, or quality control inspection, packaging, and other small jobs, so everyone was involved in the glass business. It was a community endeavor.But they were working for themselves. Capitalism at its finest. That was how we found the bead production of the Czech Republic when we were importing beads and buttons, and glassware, when we started importing in the 1990s, and for the most part it hasn’t changed. The big factories like Jablonex and Zeleznobrodskiesklo went bankrupt and closed, or consolidated and become new companies like Preciosa, so that landscape is always changing, but otherwise the bead and button production is as described, so you can be assured you are supporting a good industry of the best glass beads and buttons ever made.
