them  shiny  because  of  the  heat;  it  was  a  kind  of  fire  polishing.  The  expression  “schmelz”
(molten)  is  taken  by  some  authors  as  going  back  to  the  process  of  polishing  by  heat  in  fire
(Lilie  1895,  p.  166);  improvements  lead  to  “double  molten”(twice-polished  beads)  or  to  the
“new  double  molten”  which  was  made  in  especially  good  quality  from  sharp-edged  glass
produced  by  Riedel  (Posselt  1907,  p.  10).
The  expression  “abraded”  bead  is  confusing  because  it  is  not  the  bead  itself  that  is
abraded:  the  inside  surface  of  the  mold  was  so  highly  polished  with  an  abrasive  that  the
surface  of  the  bead  was  already  shiny  after  the  press-molding  and  did  not  need  any
additional  polishing.  According  to  Posselt,  bigger  beads  were  polished  at  a  wooden  wheel
first;  fire  polishing  in  a  polishing  furnace  followed  later.  Fire  polishing  is  supposed  to  have
been  invented  by  accident  more  than  100  years  ago  by  a  man  from  Neudorf:
“He  dried  the  beads  in  the  oven  with  a  very  hot  fire  and  left  them  in  rather  long  (he  probably  forgot
to  take  them  out  in  time).  The  beads  had  begun  to  melt  and  because  of  that,  they  took  on  a  marvelous
  shine"  (Posselt  1907,  p.  8,  9).
The  so-called  “machine-beads”were  made  by  throwing  raw  broken  beads  into  a  box  with  a
grindstone;  the  sharp  edges  were  rounded  off  through  rotating,  then  polished.  One  contemporarysourcegivesdetailedinformationontheprocessesusedforpolishingtowardstheend

of  the  19th  Century  (R.S.,  Das  Schleifen  künstlicher  Edelsteine,  Sprechsaal  1896,  p.  1026).
MOLDED  BEADS
Beads  with  a  wide  variety  of  appearances  were  pressed  into  shape.  These  processes,
referred  to  as  “squeezing,”  “molding”or  “pressing,”also  involved  an  extremely  wide  variety
of  tools  and  machines.  “Molding  "and  “squeezing”were  expressions  which  were  apparently
used  for  simpler  tongs  and  shop-work,  pressing  was  more  likely  to  have  been  reserved  for
processes  involving  machinery.  There  is  mention  in  1856  of  “molding  works”  and
“squeezing  workshops”  (Reichenberg  Report  1856,  p.  166),  of  “pressing  or  squeezing
work,”also  still  found  in  1880  (Karmarsch-Heeren  4/1880,  p.  52);  and  Parkert  speaks  of  the
“molded  or  pressed  bead”  (Parkert  1925,  pp.  184,  185).  According  to  Parkert,  the  glass
worker  Domenico  Miotti  and  the  glass  maker  Christophore  Briani  are  to  be  credited  with  the
first  attempts  at  technical  improvements  in  bead  production  concerned  with  giving  a  solid
bead  a  special  shape  by  pressing  (Parkert  1925,  p.  132,  133).
In  Bohemia  at  the  beginning  of  the  18th  Century,  according  to  Schreyer,  the  Wenzel
brothers  and  Franz  Fischer  in  Turnau  had  already
“invented  a  different  means...  using  iron  pincer-molds  for  pressing  out  10  to  15  and  more  of  the
same  stones  at  one  time,  so  that  proper  facets  appeared  on  each  pressed  stone  with  this  method
because  the  iron  mold  was  already  shaped  that  way...”  (Schreyer  1790,  p.  93).
In  a  report  by  the  Count  von  Zinzendorf  from  the  year  1774  there  is  already  talk  of  a  pair  of
tongs  with  a  mold  in  which  the  desired  figure  is  “pinched”(Kleinert  1972,  p.  17).
The  introduction  of  molding  in  Gablonz  is  attributed  to  a  “certain  Endler”by  Benda:
“The  invention  of  ‘molding’  stones  into  shapes  has  caused  the  stone  cutting  profession  to  be  reduced
  to  a  common  trade.  In  Turnau  they  already  practiced  this  molding  in  the  last  Century,  but
kept  the  secret  of  how  to  do  it  very  strictly...  Nevertheless,  a  certain  Endler  from  Gablonz  must
have  succeeded  in  finding  out  something  about  it,  since  he  erected  the  first  molding  hut  in  Gablonz ­
  toward  the  end  of  the  last  Century.  This  Endler,  known  under  the  name,  ‘the  old  molder,'
must  have  been  born  around  the  year  1760  and  was,  to  a  certain  extent,  a  genius...  But  just  as
peculiar  as  brilliant,  Endler  knew  how  to  make  inventions  better  than  how  to  make  money  with
them.  He  had  to  be  in  a  good  mood  to  mold  a  few  hundred  dozen  stones  for  someone,  after  good
money  and  a  lot  of  persuasion  ...  And  so  it  turned  out  that  the  composition  molding  works  in  our
area  were  not  trained  further  and  was  at  a  very  low  state  for  a  while  after  Endler’s  death  ...  It
wasn’t  until  the  years  between  1817and  1820  that  Anton  Mai,  No.  146,  erected  the  first  composition ­
  furnace  in  Gablonz  (farther  away  in  the  mountains  there  was  a  certain  Seidel  who  was  supposed ­
  to  have  made  compositions  earlier)  and  he  made  ruby  and  garnet  colored  compositions
which  he  molded  into  beads.  His  first  molders  were  Abraham  Dubsky  from  Turnau  and  Wenzel
Jäckel  from  Gablonz...”(Benda  1877,  p.  281  ff.).

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