The Family Who Invented Snow Globes
At 87 Schumanngasse, in the north-west of Vienna, in Austria, there is the historical business of a family that for four generations has been producing some of the most famous Christmas-themed objects in the world: it is the Original Viennese snow globe manufactory, where for over a hundred years the famous glass balls have been made with miniatures of all kinds inside, the kind that, after shaking them and placing them back on their base, simulate a snowfall. Today snow globes are mostly associated with Christmas, but their story has a very different origin, which came a bit by chance.
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Start from Erwin Perzy, a man who made surgical instruments by trade in his laboratory in Vienna, who in 1900 was commissioned to find a solution that would allow for adequate lighting in the operating theatres. Initially Perzy was inspired by the strategy used by cobblers to get light, who took glass balls, filled them with water and placed them in front of a light bulb so that they reflected and diffused the light in the work environment. Then, to try to get even more light, he tries to insert small shards of metal and glass into a glass ball.
The fact that the chips made a few whirls in the water before falling to the bottom of the ball reminded him a bit of the effect of falling snow. Inspired by this observation, Perzy then tried putting semolina in it and to get an even more realistic idea of a snowy landscape he also inserted a miniature of the sanctuary of Mariazell, a small town about a hundred kilometers south-west of Vienna. As explained by the official Austria travel guide Perzy he abandoned the idea of the lamp, but continued to develop that of the decorative object. He opened a shop, began mass production and in the following decades enjoyed great commercial success both in Europe and elsewhere.
A glass ball also became one of the most famous props in the history of cinema: it is the one seen in the key scene of the film Fourth Estate by Orson Welles (1941). However, it is not clear whether the one used in the film was one of those produced by the Austrian company.
The grandson of the inventor Erwin Perzy III, who now runs the business together with his daughter Sabine, he recounted to the site Dark Atlas that the idea of adding the Christmas element to glass balls came in the 1940s.
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During the Second World War, Erwin Perzy II, his father, also repaired bicycles and typewriters and collaborated with American troops. Some soldier had suggested that if inside the snowballs there were miniatures a little more familiar to American people they would also be appreciated in the United States. Thus, Perzy III recounts, his father created new models with three new miniatures – a small Christmas tree, a snowman and a Santa Claus – which the company began exporting to the United States with great success.
For completely different reasons, in the second half of the 1970s, Austrian Christmas glass balls began to sell well in Japan, one of the countries where they are now most exported. The Japanese car manufacturer Mitsubishi has something to do with it, which at one point made an order that was equivalent to half of the Vienna company’s annual production, Perzy III also says: the Austrian government had in fact asked Japan to buy a large quantity of some product made in Austria, promising in return to help Mitsubishi enter the national market.
Over time, the Perzys’ snow globes have inspired many similar designs. Today the Vienna manufacturer produces about 200,000 a year and in his shop, which also has a museum, you can find of all kinds: they are more or less small, cost from 7 euros and up and contain miniatures that represent Christmas-themed characters, but also landscapes, animals and foods, such as the famous Sachertorte. During the first phase of the coronavirus pandemic, when the toilet paper had become one of the most unobtainable necessities, the company also introduced various models with in it a small rollselling 17 thousand copies.
Even today, the glass balls of the Vienna company are still made by hand. The figurines are created with 3D printers and the water used is that of the city water service. For some time now, however, the “snow” is no longer produced with semolina, but with a particular mixture of plastic parts and materials specifically designed so that the particles remain suspended for up to two minutes before settling on the bottom. Among the most popular Christmas glass balls are the one with a penguin inside, the one with the Vienna Ferris wheel (Riesenrad) and the one with the inevitable snowman.
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