Sunday 22nd June: Krakow to Jablonec

A full day’s drive took us from Krakow to Jablonec, which stands 30 miles into the Czech Republic on the edge of the Jizera Mountains. These aren’t high peaks, more rolling, wooded hills with farms and villages, a favourite haunt of cyclists and walkers, and with some skiing in winter.

We are here in Jablonec because the town and its surrounding area is the most important centre in Europe for production of costume jewellery components. That is, the locality manufactures glass beads and items used with beads to make costume jewellery. As beading is Jane’s main hobby, we are here on a mission.

Production began in the 16^th century when Saxon glassmakers, from what is now Germany, began settling in the area. By the 19^th century the industry had brought such wealth to the area that many people were living in elaborate, large houses and the town sported many splendid public buildings.

At the end of the last war, the Communist dispossessed all the descendants of the original German settlers of their homes and factories, and expelled them, 100,000 in total. This was disastrous for the industry, but forced labour was brought in and some of the former trade gradually recovered. Many of the fine homes and buildings are now in decay or just shabby, but where they have been preserved and restored you get a good idea of how affluent the area was. This is the theatre, for example.

The central square also showcases the elegant lifestyle of the glass and jewellery entrepreneurs. A museum dedicated to the industry is located just off the back of the square.

The museum is where we’re going next. We’ll start with some amazing beadwork in the shape of a full size flower basket.

The collection is huge and I can only pick out a few examples, with Jane’s help, from the range. These are made from beads of jet.

This is an early beaded pen. Note that it’s a quill pen. I have a modern one done by Jane.

It’s the glitzy stuff that catches the eye, not practical at all for wear or use. This display looks like the Crown Jewels.

On the theme of impracticality, this is the longest necklace in the world and is in the Guinness Book of Records. It’s 220 metres long and was made by local art students in 4 hours. From a craft quality standpoint it has little merit.

The next exhibit is a much more wearable and beautiful creation, and just what a skilled beader might want to make.

 Some factories produced glassware as well as beads and here we have a superbly engraved glass from about 100 year ago.

More modern products were also displayed, for instance this designer vase, and underneath some intricate and delicate glass flowers.

These days production comes from large factories, but there is still some of the cottage industry that it started out as. The next photo shows a typical glass producer’s dwelling. The work was carried out in the attic room, and you can see a large vent in the centre of the roof to extract the large amount of heat generated, and the tall pair of chimneys to draw the fires for the glass making and shaping process.

Below is a model of the modern Preciosa Bead Factory, and it’s made from 200,000 beads. The little electric train and trucks are also beaded and run round the building on pressing a button.

I stop at a final exhibit. It looks to my untrained eye like a beaded bikini. I can only hope that they used strong thread.

We’ve also been to several bead shops out of the many here. The product ranges were large and the prices cheap with good but not top quality beads apart from Swarovski beads but these weren’t much cheaper than back in the UK. Our visit here was interesting and unusual compared to tripperland, but we’ll put that right in the next blog- we’re heading for Prague, one of Europe's most popular tourist destinations.