Cultural: "Made in Poland" Christmas ornaments
This is a repost of a previous post.
Tradition!
There is a long tradition of hand made Polish glass ornaments. There are many such small factories spread around Poland. People set up shop and sell these ornaments in various malls and of course, on line. Many are exported to the USA where they are sold for 3-5x the price we pay for them.
My kids and I ended up going to the mall the other day and I stopped and took a few pictures of some of the ornaments that were set up to sell.
Enjoy!
When you see numbers, these are Polish zlotys, not Euro - since Poland, while it is a member of the European Union, does not use the Euro, but still uses its own currency, the Polish zloty.
The ratio is about 3.5 zlotys to one USD. You can check at www.xe.com at any time to find the "real exchange rate" for that day.
Export
Some of the factories make ornaments for places like Macy's or other expensive stores in the USA. You can probably also find Polish glass ornaments on auction sites such as ebay if you are interested buying some. Shipping would scare me, though, as these are glass, and as such, quite breakable!
Live and in Person
Last year at this same mall, there was a man actually decorating some of these ornaments. Here are some shots from 2016.
I think the detail on these is incredible! If I see one of these again, I will buy it - I love it!
Closer.......
I'm partial to the ornaments that are special like this one. I also like the shaped ones. For a while I was buying one or two every year. But I've stopped that now since I have plenty of ornaments for our tree!
These ornaments are really all just beautiful. I have a friend who worked at one of these factories. The people who do this painting are real artists - really, very good! They don't make that much - well, they make it based on how much they do, but it isn't very much considering the talent that they have to have! She hardly made anything at all because she was slow at this work. Some of the detail is so intricate and each one of the ornaments will be slightly different, depending on the artist who is painting it.
And now you know a little bit more than you used to know about Polish hand painted ornaments.
Added in 2018
My daughter in law, Claire, and I went to our local Polish glass ornament factor located here in our town of Jozefow. The name of the company is Silverado. We originally went because she was interested in buying some Polish ornaments (made in Poland - not imports from China!) as gifts to friends and family back in the states.
While there I went in to the main office and asked if we could get a tour of how they make the glass ornaments. The lady told me I’d pay for it afterwards. A young man gave us a private two on on tour - and he did it in English for Claire’s sake! I was tickled. I had been on one before, but this time in English - I did understand more than I had on the one before.
Here are some pictures.
Here are some ornaments I saw today.
Step 1:
First they create the bulbs - today there were two men in there making them - one was making round ones and the other was making them in the shape of an alarm clock.
This first video is a man who is making some alarm clock shaped ones. He is first heating up the glass, shaping it generally and then putting it into a mold. After he molds it, he is cooling it off and it will be done and ready for the next step. They leave that long pointed piece of glass on it so they can hold it while they work on it as they need a handle.
Here’s a close up of that same man and what he’s doing.
This video is a man who is making round ornaments. He simply blows into them to make them round after he heats up the glass.
Step 2:
Second, after they make the ornaments, they have to silverize them - turn the insides into silver. They put some liquid in the middle of the ornament and shake it around in very hot water until the inside turns silver. This way the glass ornaments are not see-through. They can then be more easily painted and decorated.
Step 3:
After the blow them and make them silver, they then decorate/paint them. Here are two different ladies painting them. They asked us to just get pictures of their hands. What they didn’t want is us to get in their faces.
They paint, they glue, they add glitter and other bling. It is amazing how they do this! One step at a time!
The balls you see sitting up in front of the middle chair - look like a big round lollipop - are drying in between steps.
This company exports a lot to Dillards, Brooks Brothers, Southern Living, Nordstroms and other such stores. They sell to companies in the US, New Zealand, Australia, the UK, as well as some other European countries and of course, Poland (but not so much). They have a retail shop on line and because we live close, we can hop into their local shop right on the premises.
That means "Happy Holiday" in Polish!
And don't forget - you can buy fabric for your special projects from my sister, Rachael, over a the store! She's ready and able to serve you with some great fabrics at fantastic prices!