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Show Ornament Making A Cottage Industry Those colored glass ornaments that we hang on our Christmas trees used to come from Germany, Czechoslovakia and Poland. A A small number were made in Japan. When the war cut off these supplies, American glass manufacturers, manu-facturers, who had never bothered with these products before, turned part of their facilities over to making the pretty . geegaws. Mechanical methods were soon developed de-veloped that could blow as many ornaments in an hour as a European Euro-pean glassblower could make in a month. Thus modern efficiency may doom this picturesque little industry, carried on in the mountainous moun-tainous towns of eastern Europe. Ornament making is a typical "cottage industry" in the little villages that cling to the steep mountainsides. Families specialize in certain shapes and designs, patterns that may date back for hundreds of years unchanged. The father, using a bunsen burner, carefully blows the thin glass tubing to the desired shape, with the aid of an iron mold. His son acting as mold boy, removes the hot ornament to a cooling table. Next the mother silvers the inside, and finally the daughter applies paint and perhaps decorative designs. |