Wholesale glass Christmas ornaments from Europe
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History on the Christmas Ornament

With the rise in popularity of the Christmas tree in the mid-1800s to World War II, the Europeans invented the glass Christmas tree ornament and thus began a cottage industry. While wreaths and garlands of herbs and evergreens were popular, glass ornaments replaced mostly edible decorations on trees in about 1850-1860. The "cottage industry" blossomed in the Thuringian mountains of Central Germany, where peasant families manufactured hand-blown glass ornaments. Glass-making was a tradition in the town of Lauscha, for example, that turned its manufactures to ornaments in the 1860s.

In a typical glass-making family, the father and adult men blew glass tubing that was heated over a Bunsen burner into ornament shapes. The other family members applied a silver nitrate solution to the insides of the ornaments, so they would reflect light. Boards with rows of nails were hung from the cottage ceiling, and the coated ornaments (with stems of glass tubing still attached) were inverted over the nails and dried overnight. Each ornament was then dipped in brightly colored lacquer and decorated with paint or fancy attachments like ribbon, spun glass, or feathers. The glass stem was cut, and a metal hanger was attached.

Balls and ovals certainly predominated, but, by making plaster or metal molds into which the glass was blown, many fanciful shapes were devised: hunting horns, elaborate bells, vases, and birds with tails made out of spun glass were especially cherished.

Germany was the exclusive producer of glass ornaments until 1925. German ornaments first came to America as prized parts of the heritage of immigrants. Later, the ornaments were imported. In 1925, Japan was the next country to produce significant quantities of ornaments; the cottage industry also suited Japanese families. Czechoslovakia and Poland, both countries with strong glass-making traditions, entered the marketplace in the late 1920s. By 1935, the United States imported over 250 million handmade ornaments but still had no industry of its own. In 1939, the commencement of World War II in Europe shut off supplies of glass ornaments.

Corning Glass Works in New York entered the ornament business. Corning was skilled in the production of light bulbs, which used a ribbon machine to flow molten glass through an endless series of molds. The machine had been developed in 1926, and, by adapting it to the glass shapes needed for ornaments, Corning could produce over 2,000 ornament balls a minute; and about 100 million ornaments per production year could be generated by ribbon machines at the Corning Works. Today, ornaments are mass-produced by this same method or made by hand with blown glass and specially designed molds as they have been made for over 100 years.