Folks would decorate their trees with anything handy. Jewelry, cameo frames, popcorn garlands, knives and forks — all can be seen dangling in old photos. One lucky prospector decorated his tree with gold nuggets.
But it was in 1880s Bohemia, in today’s Czech Republic, that the glass Christmas tree ornament changed the game.
“Central Europe has had a glass-making tradition since the Romans taught the people in those areas how to make glass,” Radko said.
Italy — most famously, Murano — had great furnaces where glassblowers could fashion heavy vases and figurines. But elsewhere, craftspeople were unable to heat the molten glass to thousands of degrees. On their smaller, cooler flames, they created a thinner glass. Christmas-ornament glass.
“It’s blown from hollow tubes of glass,” Radko said. “They use the Bunsen burner to close the bottom end. The tube itself becomes the ornament.”
In Bohemia, since the 1830s, there had been a tradition of making glass costume jewelry. Glass beads and pearls were sewn into folk costumes and wedding gowns. Some of these tiny, jewel-sized ornaments also made their way onto Christmas trees.
As Czech artists fanned out across Europe, they came into contact with Thuringian toymakers. In Germany, toys were made from molds. Why, they said, couldn’t the same thing be done with glass Christmas ornaments? “They said, why don’t we make a mold, make them larger,” Radko said. “They don’t have to be beads.”
These thin, light, hand-blown Christmas ornaments were starting to be seen around Europe in the 1880s, when — the story goes — F.W. Woolworth was on one of his buying trips. He brought some of the glass ornaments home for his store. In two days they had sold out.
