00:00 The Inge Glass Company in Germany is one of the oldest in the world, still making
00:06 Christmas ornaments the traditional way. Blowing glass and painting them by hand.
00:13 Every single creation is coated from the inside first with real silver.
00:20 We're 15 generations of glass making.
00:23 There were once over 1,500 manufacturers in this part of Eastern Germany,
00:28 making it the glass ornament capital of the world. Even Queen Victoria was a
00:35 client. But today many Christmas decorations are made of plastic and 87%
00:42 are mass-produced in China. Germany makes less than 1%. So how did this family
00:50 business with a secret sparkle manage to survive while hundreds went out of
00:55 business? We went to Germany to see how this iconic craft is still standing.
01:04 Every new Christmas ornament starts life as a drawing. A design like this can
01:11 take up to six hours. Chris Henkel then spends a week bringing it to life in the
01:17 form of a clay figure. And he's the only one at the company doing this job.
01:24 All the tools I use, but most of all what's A and O, are my hands.
01:29 In every figure there's a little bit of me.
01:34 This method of blow-molding ornaments hasn't changed for nearly 200 years.
01:44 Matthias Fiebig first heats a glass tube to 800 degrees Celsius. He then places it
01:51 in a mold and starts blowing. He has only seconds to work before it cools down and hardens.
01:59 Too much air can make the glass thin and fragile. Too little will
02:12 make it thick and it won't fill up the mold. Some shapes, like the classic
02:17 bauble, don't need a mold. Nowadays Matthias can make around 450 ornaments a day.
02:25 Matthias says learning new shapes can still be a challenge.
02:37 Every year we add new ornaments. It's always a challenge to master them.
02:48 The glass ornaments are now ready to take on the colours of Christmas.
02:53 Workers start by coating the inside with a solution of silver nitrate. They swirl the
03:00 liquid around to make sure it's evenly coated. Then dip it in hot water which
03:06 will trigger a chemical reaction that makes the silver stick to the glass.
03:14 This inner coating is what gives the ornaments their silver mirror effect.
03:22 They are washed with cold water and left to dry for one hour. Then it's time to add
03:31 colour to the outside. The glass creations are transformed into Inger Glas'
03:37 classic red bauble and into these mini pickles and yellow lemons. The coat is
03:47 thin enough to allow the mirroring from the silver to still shine through.
03:52 The warm air actually comes straight from gas burners used by the glassblowers.
04:06 Inger Glas makes 1.5 million ornaments every year. Some decorations get a
04:16 layer of spray paint and they have over 100 colours to choose from. The most
04:22 popular are red, gold and silver. Once they're dry it's time for the next paint
04:30 layer. Stephanie Greinobroom is one of the 15 full-time painters. She's been
04:38 working here for 20 years and can paint as many as 110 ornaments in a day.
04:45 Most of the ornaments here are painted by hand. They are left to dry for 20 minutes.
04:59 And this is the final touch - a star-shaped crown.
05:05 Steffi Schneider checks every piece one last time to make sure it's ready for
05:18 shipping. Some decorations get a final flourish like feathers.
05:24 Inger Glas has been making birds like this since the factory
05:35 opened. At the time each glass factory in town had its own signature ornament.
05:44 The company sells around 900 different Christmas decorations but it has an
05:49 archive of 15,000 to fall back on. Most of them are stored in this vault and the
05:57 collection keeps growing. Every year we have about 100 new molds. Marie Moulleblech
06:06 is the 15th generation of her family to work in the glassmaking business.
06:11 Growing up in a company and a family of glassblowers was very colourful. I did
06:18 more drawing on glass bowls than on paper. In 1597 one of their ancestors
06:26 helped found the town of Lauscha which became known for its glasswork. Back then
06:32 people across Germany decorated Christmas trees with apples, nuts and
06:37 candles. The first glass ornaments were made in 1847 by an artisan in Lauscha.
06:44 At the time Europe was going through a devastating food crisis. Food was
06:50 expensive so what he did was he just build it out of glass. In 1848 Queen
06:58 Victoria brought a Christmas tree to Windsor Castle and adorned it with
07:02 ornaments from Lauscha and the trend grew. By 1925 glass ornaments became the
07:09 town's biggest industry with over 1,500 businesses. But everything came to a halt
07:15 after World War II. The Soviet authorities who took control of what
07:20 would become East Germany put a stop to all glass ornament production and Lauscha
07:26 found itself on the wrong side of the border. Many glassmakers including
07:31 Marie's paternal grandfather fled to the West. They started with glass blowing in
07:38 their own house in the basement. He opened Inge Glass with his wife in 1953
07:43 in Neustadt by Korberg. When my grandfather Heinz Müller-Blich came to West Germany
07:49 here in Neustadt he wasn't able to bring that much things with him actually
07:56 nothing. Meanwhile production flourished abroad. In the United States the glass
08:03 ribbon machine allowed a factory to blow up to 300,000 glass ornaments a day. And
08:09 in the 1950s more durable plastic ornaments began to replace glass ones.
08:15 Production became so fast and cheap that many German ornament makers could not
08:21 compete. By 2021 87% of Christmas decorations were made in China while
08:29 less than 1% were made in Germany. The consuming changed and like hand-blown
08:37 hand-painted wasn't that important anymore. Inge Glass is one of the few
08:41 businesses here that managed to survive. But it couldn't make it on tradition
08:47 alone. So in the 1990s Marie's parents decided that if they couldn't beat the
08:54 competition they'd have to join them. My father thought about other possibilities
09:00 of how this handicraft can go into future and the only possibility he found
09:07 was to get to know the Chinese market better and to learn about the industrial
09:15 making of glass ornaments. They started producing a line of cheaper
09:21 machine-made glass and plastic ornaments to help keep the business afloat. Peak
09:27 season of course is in summer actually because then we have to produce
09:32 everything for Christmas and everything has to be sent to the customers in time.
09:38 Nowadays they sell to retailers and department stores in 40 countries.
09:44 Outside of Europe their biggest market is the US.
09:50 They even have stores throughout Germany. Their cheapest glass ornaments are $8 a piece.
09:57 The priciest go for $100 like the Nikolaus Prepares.
10:05 Marie says she's inspired by her family's story and the way they made the
10:11 glass.
10:14 It's just what my heart beats for and it's my passion and I can't imagine to stop with it.
10:22 It's just what my heart beats for and it's my passion and I can't imagine to stop with it.
10:32 [Music]
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