“Agate rods:” amber agate, mother-of-pearl agate rods - solid colored and striped, agate rods
[listed with numbers]
“Rods of hollow and pressed glass:” antique colors, smoke, beryl, Japan topaz, antique
Waterford, water blue, lilac, red, antique pink, violet blue, violet pale, violet dark, Iserin yellow,
Iserin Rose, Iserin blue, Champagne yellow
The naming of “striped rods” and of “bicolored and tricolored rods” should permit a
conjecture at least, that brings this list together with the rod demonstration of the
Hessenglashütte at Oberursel (ill. 61, p. 113). A price list for rocailles from the year
1963 for the Ludwig Breit Wiesenthalhütte glassworks in Schwäbisch-Gmünd has
survived. It gives the colors:
“crystal, black, green, blue, amethyst, topaz, aquamarine, gray, amber, hyacinth, garnet, chalk,
alabaster, opaque green, opaque blue, turquoise, opaque violet, opaque gray, opaque yellow,
opaque orange, coral, opaque brown, opaque pink and ivory;” 2-cut beads came in “crystal,
black, topaz, green, blue, aqua, amber, hyacinth, garnet, coral, opaque yellow, opaque orange,
opaque green, opaque blue, turquoise, Atlas white, Atlas aqua, blue, green topaz,”
and bugles were supplied in the colors, “black, opaque white, coral, Atlas white”and in
“certain opaque colors. ”
In addition to the list from 1940 in the Gablonz Archive and Museum (Kaufbeuren-
Neugablonz) there is also a highly interesting “Specialized Dictionary of Gablonz
Articles in 5 Languages” which was made available to me. It was published in 1923 by
the “Cercle Polyglotte,”and no doubt was intended for and used by the strongly export
oriented industry. It contains a two-page alphabetical “color catalogue.” I restricted
myself to re-printing the German-English equivalents (see p. 42).
BEAD COLORING AND DECORATION
The delicate designs that appear to have been painted on but are in fact created with
thinnest of glass canes shaped into lines or dots and melted on, unite with the bead
surfaces as low reliefs (ill. 242, p. 286). Other techniques of decoration or coloration
are not as durable and are particularly susceptible to mechanical damage and the
effects of light. Some producers or finishers take the precaution of pointing to these
characteristics (ills. 26, 27, pp. 60, 61).
The technologies for decorating beads know innumerable variations, the most
important being: painting, staining, paint linings, mirror-backing, metalizing, gold and
silver coating, platinizing, iridizing and lustering. For simplification, Parkert divides
them into two groups: “external surface decoration”and “inserted decoration”{Parkert
1925, p. 152).
PAINTING
Düring the Biedermeier times gold painted decorations on beads must have been
especially populär: little golden stars adorn white and colored beads (ill. 144, p. 207),
thin-lined stylized spirals of leaves wind themselves around delicate hollow beads
(ill. 232, p. 278).
Düring the 1840s, Anton Blaschek was supposed to have decorated beads with little
crosses or stars in gold and silver; they were melted in and then burnished (Posselt
1907, p. 4; Parkert 1925, p. 140).
It was natural for the Gablonz glass notions industry, too, to use painting for
decoration, probably already as early as the beginning of the 19th Century, also in the
sphere of influence of the refining and finishing districts of Haida and Steinschönau in
northern Bohemia. Benda places the beginning of blown bead painting in Gablonz in
the 1820s, with constantly increasing importance up into the 1860s and beyond. Next
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