FOREWORD 
Beads from Gablonz sparkle at us from their sample cards in brilliant colors, silvered and gilded, 
shimmering in silky pastel hues. Jet black, they stand out from silk and tulle, lend radiant 
brightness to bead mosaics and decorate fabrics in dizzying variety. Embroidered and knit, they 
become neighbors to metallic beads; artistically braided into bell pulls they serve both the eye and 
the ear; their sparkle crowns diadems and combs, clasps and pins. From the mat-black of 
mourning to the splendor of jewelry for the theater, the entire ränge of emotions from pain to joy 
can be found in the sheen of carefully chosen beads. Nut-sized or as fine as grains of dust, they 
line up in rows for heavy necklaces or stream like unpolished flitter across surfaces, creating 
Ornaments that appear to be painted with tiny specks of color. 
Blown, pinched and wound in glass, pressed from the plastic matter, the beads from Gablonz 
take on all imaginable shapes; spheres and olives, cubes and cylinders, rings and discs, spindles 
and spools, fruits and flowers; they bearfantasy names such as Atlas beads, morning-ray beads, 
feather and snake beads, boxers and toggles. Already at a very early time, they were spread over 
all the continents of the world. Many were lost, were broken, were stored away and forgotten. 
Taking complicated paths, some of them have managed to find their way back to Europe, back to 
Bohemia where they came from. How do we recognize them, these beads from Gablonz, what do 
we call their many different types, who still knows about the flames and molds, the furnaces and 
tongs that brought them into existence? 
Billions of beads made of glass and ceramics can no longer be classified. No one knows the time 
or place of their manufacture. In our search for clues, we would probably have found ourselves in 
a no-man’s land if it had not been for the indispensable witnesses of the time: the sample charts 
and books, the licensing Privileges and the recipes, the reports of travelers who stood gaping in 
the huts of the glassblowers and pressers, to whom the maker of composition glass closed his 
doors, who watched the long pulling processes used in glass factories for drawing tubes and were 
blinded by the glorious colors of the canes. 
Like no other city, Vienna is favorably inclined to researchers: museums, archives and libraries 
reveal treasures that leave one asking how it will be possible to master such richness (the 
Gablonz beads in a globally unparalleled collection reaching from Biedermeier to Art Nouveau, 
owned by the Vienna Technical Museum, are a completely unexpected discovery). Only a 
fragment of the wealth of material uncovered can be forced between the two covers of a book. 
Therefore, despite its considerable size this publication can show certain phenomena in highlight 
form only: the sample cards from the turn of the Century, bead technology, the Contemporary texts 
in the appendix. It is hoped that a vivid impression will be provided by the illustrations which try to 
combine public property and the private passion for collecting. The explanatory text that 
accompanies them had to be kept within spartanic limits because of the volume of the sources 
available. 
Using information taken from the collections in Vienna and in Kaufbeuren-Neugablonz (Gablonz 
Archive and Museum, Neugablonz Industry and Jewelry Museum, Kaufbeuren-Neugablonz), 
combined with privilegia in the Austrian patent Office in Vienna and illustrative material from 
Companies still active today, special attention is first directed to the production methods used for 
glass beads. Extensive chapters are devoted to drawn and pressed beads and to wound and 
blown beads. Colors, shapes and sizes and the Problems of terminology are treated in special 
sections of their own. The sample cards from the Gablonz Companies, Redlhammer Brothers and 
Mahla Brothers, are another important area. The Contemporary documentation includes texts on 
the technology and history of Gablonz beads and is enriched with illustrations from the second 
half of the 19th Century. 
The technological introduction intentionally exceeds the temporal boundaries (Historicism and 
Art Nouveau) set for this publication, so that certain procedures can be described better. Here, 
the collection in the Technical Museum in Vienna is indispensable; its richness is a continuous 
source of astonishement. Particular treasures among this diversity that is yet to be fully explored, 
are the beads from the Biedermeier (from the “Imperial Chamber of Factory Products”) and Art 
Nouveau periods. Raw materials and semi-finished products, from chunks of composition-glass 
from Bohemia to cakes of enamel from Venice, from tiny thin-walled tubes for blown beads to the 
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