Zeppelin
Material: Mirrored glass, painted with gelatin
Size: 13 cm long
Age: ~ 1920
Origin: Germany, Lauscha
Condition:
Very nice used condition.
Glass decorations from Lauscha / Christmas tree decorations made of glass
Glass Christmas tree decorations have been around since the middle of the 19th century. Century, mainly by home workers in Thuringia. According to legend, the idea of making colored glass balls for the Christmas tree came from a poor glassblower from Lauscha who could not afford the expensive walnuts and apples in 1847. He is said to have blown up glass bottles to make glass decorations for the Christmas tree. This story cannot be proven! The raw material had to be obtained from a glassworks and was certainly not free. The order book of a glassblower has been preserved, in which an order for six dozen “Christmas balls” in various sizes is recorded for the first time in 1848. So they were not made for the tree itself. In the early days of production, glassblowers used a harmful alloy of tin and lead to mirror the glass surfaces. From 1870 onwards, the balls got their shine from silver nitrate, which is still used today in the production of mirrors. The publishing houses from Sonneberg took over distribution. The mass production of this new tree decoration was made possible by the construction of a gasworks in Lauscha in 1867, because only a very hot gas flame made it possible to blow large and thin-walled balls. Previously, the Bunsen burners were operated with rapeseed oil and paraffin. The mirrored balls were then dipped in paint by family members and some were also decorated with mica particles. In 1870, Justus von Liebig succeeded in coating glass bodies with a silver solution and making them shine. Around 1880, the American Frank Winfield Woolworth imported the first Christmas tree balls into the United States. As a result, production was expanded significantly.