hand, bundles of strung bugles or beads (ills. 137, 138, 140-142, pp. 194, 195, 202, 203), 
on the other, strings of bugles or beads (ill. 139, p. 198), which are described more 
accurately by remnants of the paper labels that belong to them. The documentation of a 
hexagonal bead of amber-colored glass reads as follows: “Glass bügle, broken bead, not 
polished and polished bead ä 3 (facets). ” 
Round beads of crystal glass acquire a certain color effect from the pink thread: “Glass 
bügle, broken, polished, cut, not polished and polished bead ä 5 facet:(s)”. 
Beads were broken off at the “breaking wheel” (“Sprengscheibe”, “Sprengrad”, 
“Schneidescheibe”). According to Parkert, a “wooden frame with a flywheel and a vertical 
breaking wheel of stone” was used (Parkert 1925, p. 143); according to Benda the 
production of drawn beads proceeded in such a way 
“that hollow glass rods were broken into little pieces by means of a rotating knife-edged stone 
wheel. Beads made like this are either sold in this raw state, or are transformed into better cat 
egories by heating and cutting; they are then called motten, double molten, 2-cut, 3-cut, 5-cut 
facetted drawn beads.”{Benda 1877, p. 284). 
Lilie describes the process as follows: 
“The drawn beads are made by breaking off little pieces from hollow, usually very thin glass 
canes at sharp vertically rotating stone wheels ...” (Lilie 1895, p. 166). 
The application for a privilege by Strauss in 1889 also contains a description of this process: 
“The process commonly used up to now for making glass beads consists of so-called 
breaking-off of glass tubes, that is, by holding the glass tubes against a moderately quickly 
rotating, sharp-edged cutting wheel”(Privilegium 39/1892). 
“The earlier bead breakers, ” reports Winter in 1900, “sat at their cutting wheel turning on a hori 
zontal axis and put into motion with their foot, and broke off bead for bead by cutting them off the 
thin hollow glass cane. In a place at the edge of the language area, I still ran into a remnant of 
former times, an old bead-breaker who was by-passed by the quickly passing time instead of 
being caught up by it. At best, he can break one kilogram of beads in a day... working 14 hours a 
day, he can finish 4,000... The few other manual bead breakers the same supplier engages are 
paid only seven kreuzer per thousand...” (Winter 1900, p. 91). 
According to Tayenthal, ever since the 1830s, the drawn bead was one of the main articles 
of the entire bead industry. The expression used by this author, and by other sources as 
well, “coupe bead,” is probably taken from the French and refers to the same bead 
commonly termed “Bohemian bead" in handicrafts publications of the time. The use for 
grave wreaths, lighting fixtures and bell pulls also Supports this assumption (Tayenthal 
1900, p. 20). The synonymous use of “broken”or “coupe "beads by Simm & Co. in Polaun 
appears to me to be characteristic of this (Arnold 1909, p. 89). 
A historical retrospect shows that the “breaking-off” of the bead (at first only round, not 
sharp-cornered) was already well known by the end of the 19th Century in Morchenstern 
(Benda 1877, p. 284; Posselt 1907, p. 1). After the death of Anton Posinke from 
Morchenstern in 1812, his widow married a certain Urban from Beran near Zasada that 
same year. Urban took overthe Posinke business and ran the drawn bead production in the 
Labau area. Drawn bead production was also represented in Neudorf (Benda 1877, p. 184). 
Lilie called Neudorf and Morchenstern the centers of drawn bead production, with Gablonz 
next to them. Düring Lilie’s time, however, this technique was hardly found any longer 
because of the “extremely depressedprices,"although it was still widespread in the Semil 
and Starkenbach districts and in Czech areas (Lilie 1894, p. 166). Lilie probably was 
referring to work done at the manual ortreddle benches, since the so-called “bead breaking 
machines” introduced toward the turn of the Century in the Gablonz district created an 
extensive drawn bead production (ills. 82-86, pp. 138-141), which Lilie also points to: 
“Since more recent times, the breaking and cutting of beads is also done with machines 
made after Venetian models.”(Lilie 1895, p. 166). 
These so-called “breaking machines” using the Venetian System, introduced into Bohemia 
towards the end of the Century, actually used a chopping process, which is not the same as 
210