Sunday, April 5, 2015

Gablonzer Industrie brochure - 1999.

Looking through our library of sample cards, books and catalogs, I came across this old brochure on the Gablonzer Industry in NeuGablonz. We used to import from different factories here back in the late 90's . Our last year of importing was 2000. Our very last visit to NeuGablonz was in 2012 when we stayed with Ute Preis of Emil Hubner and Soehn, the year she closed her factory. Most, if not all of these companies are now closed.
















Neumann GmbH is still in operation as of 2015.
























All of these companies originated in Gablonz, Czechoslovakia, and were Sudeten Germans who were deported after the war.

Sunday, January 4, 2015

On the bead trail.



A few years back J-Me and I were driving around the Jizera Mountains on back roads around Zasada, coming back to Jablonec from seeing beads at Drda Bead Company in Hut, when I had to answer a call of nature. We were about a mile past the large Ornela factory in Zasada, on a small road with forest on both sides when I saw a small dirt road leading off to the left. I pulled off the road onto this cut out between two large trees and ducked behind a tree to take care of business. J-Me in the mean time began examining the road (being the rockhound she is) and made a fun discovery.


Among the ruts on the dirt roadway where deep tire tracks from lorries and trucks had carved a trail were glass beads scattered all over the road. She started picking them up and following the trail deeper into the forest. I joined her in picking up beads, quickly filling up our pockets with beads and dirt.


The forest got deeper and darker and we were all alone, until out of nowhere a woman on a horse rode by waving at us and vanished into the forest. After about a mile the forest opened up into a meadow on the side of the mountain, and we could see forest all around us with a sprinkling of houses in the distance. The road branched off into two directions and both roads (trails, really) led back into the forest on the far side of the meadow. The road became smoother and the bead finds stopped.


Our conclusion was that the rough dirt road with its dips and bumps caused the trucks traveling on it loaded down with ramish and seconds/over runs of unwanted and discarded beads from one of the local bead factories to spill off the side of the trucks onto the road, leaving a trail of beads for us to follow.

If we followed the trail long enough we would eventually find the dump site and a treasure trove of old beads.

We didn't have the time or equipment to follow the split trail and dig up the dump site when and if we found it this time, but we marked the trail in our minds for a future adventure when we came back one day.


Some of what we found.


We knew bead makers threw broken beads onto their driveways in front of their houses, and we had heard stories about factories dumping old inventory and samples, molds, equipment and ramish into rivers when they ran out of room to dump it on their property, or when they closed their business and didn't want the competition to get their hands on it, so maybe (definitely) we had stumbled onto a dump site of a bead factory. This would definitely require further investigation one day when we come back prepared to dig into the dump site and find cool stuff. Plastic bags, a folding plastic shovel, stuff like that what we use back home rockhounding out in the desert. Fun!