Kolbenova flea market in Prague is great for bead hunting. The atmosphere is slightly akward. Farmers are selling their wares alongside stalls with weapons, or women with nothing but a small piece of cloth with old jewelry and household items next to it. There are a few bigger sellers of beads that apparantly bought up large lots from bead factories going out of business.

This antique/junk shop in Zmrzovka, a few miles from Jablonec is a huge treasure chest of beads, buttons, findings, chandelier parts, chatons etc that can be two years orld, or a hundred years old.
It is dirty, messy, and a complete chaos. Once you pick something up, something else falls down. Since last year, the owner apparantly bought up a huge amount of material from Jablonex. Mostly sample cards, old and new.

In the second picture you can see a drawer of mixed bits and pieces (my favorite types of drawers). Included were for example tiny venetian millefiori cane slices, that were used in Czech beadmaking.

I think you can tell I am having fun.....

In Pencin is a mixed business that makes beads, is a goat farm, has an exhibit of historical farming machines and gives tours to visitors.
I was suprised to find that when going through a tour of the bead factory, it was still very much like other factories I visited locally. The first picture shows the factory hall where the beads were pressed.

The result of the bead pressing, and the melting glass canes

The machines for tumble polishing, and the set up for facetting beads.

I visited this factory last year as well, and this time I was once again welcomed to see the process of bead pressing up close. Interesting is that it is pretty close to the city center of Jablonec.

The man from this antique shop was very friendly, and very happy to share his stories of the bead industry.
'First the Germans and Czechs worked together making beads and lived together in Jablonec. The houses became bigger and bigger and people were very rich. Then the Nazi's came, and the Jablonec Germans worked with the nazi's. After the Germans lost, the Germans had to leave. During communism, we had a big company for beads and bijoux. Now this company is gone, and the Chinese are making our beads.'
Is guess that pretty much sums up the history of the last hundred years in Jablonec.

This woman was lampworking as part of a demonstration in a shop in Zelezny Brod, another important glassmaking town.
The second picture shows me working on a antique bead spinner in a small museum. I worked with a foot pedal, and it was very effective.

I was able to visit the Pas factory, which is one of the many companies that started in Jablonec after the revolution of 1989. The owner, who started the company, Herr Schilhann, spoke to me about what it was like setting up a company in that time, the struggles he went through, and what it was like now.
He said nobody ever asks about how the business started, and talking about his memories seemed to at one point in our meeting, to bring back some of his fighting spirit. Before he had said that the current crisis in Jablonec was worse than the crisis of WWII. But then he sat up, and proudly stated that they will face this challenge and all challenges that are yet to come. 'It is in our blood', he said.

Pas makes their own glass canes, presses beads, facets beads, makes waxed beads, and they make their own metal components.
I was able to see te process of waxing the beads, so they get their shiny pearlescent coating. Not sure if I am using the right terminology. In German they are called 'wachsperlen'. Unfortunately I was not able to see the making of the glass canes, because the furnace was not working anymore. They were just a few days before the summer holiday. (Sorry Russ.....no pictures)

I didn't get a picture of the furnace in production either. It ran early in the day only. We visited too late in the day. In this picture you can see that the "glory hole" or what ever the crucible where the glass is melted was still hot ready for the next day's production.

We were told that this was one of the few Czech factories producing their own glass rods. Most buy rods from Preciosa/Ornela. This furnace was quite similar to the design of a Chinese furnace that made smaller rods with a hole blown in the center used for making faceted "Chinese Crystal" beads.

Thanks, Floor, for sharing your discoveries with us.

Thanks for showing this. There are indeed very few companies left that still make their own rods. It gives Pas an advantage, because they can have their own colours and designs produced.

Most do use the preciosa rods. It was interesting to see when we were in a place that made marbles and technical glass, they had all the sample cards from Jablonex with the different glass colours sitting there. It is indeed the standard glass for all different uses. Even in Neugablonz, all glass rods came from Preciosa. None are made in Germany anymore.

I will be in China this fall. First visiting the Hongkong trade fair, and then onto Beijing. I do not think I will make it to the production side of things. If you have more stories to tell about this Russ, I would be very happy if you could share some time.....

When speaking to people from the museum, they said that it was not uncommon to dump beads and other glass items in the foundation of houses being built. Apparantly it was 'not done' in the communist time to sell unfavored old stock for low prices, so they would be destroyed, lost.
Just in the afternoon after hearing about this, I came across a building site where I saw exactly this phenomenon. A whole layer of the dug up foundations were scattered with glass pieces, beads and buttons. Old glass cane ends, pieces of glass reflectors and glass salt shaker tops.

The second picture shows the storage room at a factory of marbles.

Many of the glass producers and exporters had large homes, workshops, and exporthouses built in the art nouveau style. It is a quite spectacular sight when walking through the town of Jablonec. Many ladies' faces, but also logo's of the initials of the owner decorate the houses.

A typical glasshutte, or glass workshop, identifiable from its chimney. It appeared to be squatted at the moment. Second picture shows the wonderful museum of Jablonec.

First shows a sample card of different variations of glass faux turqoise cabuchons. Second samplecard is huge, with a great variety of wound beads.

A close up of the prveious sample cards, and a picture of a necklace with egyptian influences.

First is (newly composed) necklace with millefiori beads, second a necklace of Prosser beads.
The Czechs call Prosser beads 'sinter beads'. The last company producing them was Preciosa, but this was still at the original site that was the Redlhammer factory before. They stopped making them in 1993. The process for making pressed (molded) beads had become more and more automated and cheaper. With the energy prices going up, making Prosser beads was no longer profitable. They were originally the cheaper beads, and that is what made them popular. When they started becoming more expensive to produce than pressed/molded beads, there was no more demand for them.

In the small vollage of Bratrikov, we came across this memorial next to the bus stop. It was to commemorate the local victims of WWI. The little area around the statue was covered with glass shards. The little pieces are the remainder of the glass molding process. It is just one of the many examples of hw much glass production is intertwined with the everyday history of this area.

Hi Floor

Did anyone mention the bead manufacturing work done in the prisons?

I can give you some eyewitness reports if interested- i think it must be included if your survey covers all glass bead production in Jablonec...

Hi,
One more thing I forgot on here, but will be mentioning in the book: the work in prisons.
I took the article from Catherine Henry on forced labour in the Czech glass industry with me, and asked several people about it.
The responses varied.....
One woman who used to work in Jablonex made no secret of the fact that work was done in prisons. She saw it as not a very interesting topic: people in prisons needed and need to work too, to make money. She actually stated that at the moment, with unemployment being so high, that it is actuually quite difficult for prisonors to get any work at all. So she saw it simply as a form of employment, then and now. She was not able to say if it was a large or a small portion of the work that was done in prisons.

I talked to the curators from the museum about this too. They did not deny it at all, but did not appear to know too much about the details. I gave them the mentioned article.

I have also spoken to the president of the new organisation of bijoux and beadmaking companies. He is 83 years old, and will be writing to me with more details. His response to my question was that there were many very dark sides to the work and way of working in the Jablonex era. He said for the communist the bijoux industry was a means to many political ends. When I receive his email, I will get back to you.
So I will indeed be including this in my book.

If you have any more specific information, I would welcome it.

Hi Floor and all
here is one link to part of the story.
i learned from friends who travelled there to buy or research that you would never be shown the beads being made because they were produced in a prison factory under sweated conditions.
Jaworsky was a tennis star who made the mistake of trying to get his girlfriend out of Czechoslovakia without the proper documents, and ended up in the prison described in the link.
His cause was taken up by some influential business people in UK at the time, and they negotiated for his freedom.
i met this man when he came into my shop in Portobello Rd and selected some rather boring Czech beads. I was able to converse with him in German, and he explained that they werent a present for a daughter but he needed examples to show the people he would be meeting that evening and thanking- that these were the types he had been forced to make. He also mentioned making metal findings.

This was indeed the article I took with me, from your link. And now do I connect the dots: your encounter was mentioned in this article.

From what I was told, the prisoners were doing the most labour intensive work, that involved the least skill.

We personally know several beadmakers and a few other people who were forced to be in the prisons for several different reasons, some were made to work in various bead factories.
One story- A Czech man who owned a small cottage industry bead factory was taken into prison, for anti-social behavior.(for not wanting to be a communist) The Russians first had made him shovel coal into his own glass furnaces. Then later used him to teach others what he knew. He was forced to teach others how to make his bead mold shapes, how to press his beads, how to fix his machines and far more details on the beadmaking he was known for. After the war he was released and went back to purchase his house and bead factory from the government. He did restart his factory and taught his son how to make his beads. He is now retired and his son is running the business.
Another story- A glass beadmaker saw us at a show selling his lampwork beads he had made in prison. He was from Poland and was taken as a escapee. He came by our booth one day and saw some of the vintage lampwork he had. I gave him three of them for his collection. He later called us to get more so he could show them to his family.
We had a friend whom we had sold some other lampwork beads to years earlier also meet up with him and he got some from her.
We have more stories for later down the line........ traveling bead stories.

J-Me and Guy do tours to the Czech bead factories. They led the tour that Jamey and Russ went on last summer. These folks have sold at Rodeway in Tucson for years, in one of the motel rooms. Floor, you may have met them when you were there in 2009.

That does indeed show the general concept of forced labour and prison work in a much more personal way.
Hoping to hear more from you, and your travelling bead stories.

A picture of a garden with glass canes used as decoration.

Finally, one of the many wonderful sunsets from our apartment window, to at least make you think I did not only look at the beads.....
;-)

A picture of the garden of our apartment, with beads scattered all around. Homeworkers would string beads here in the 1960's. Beads that got dropped or discarded are a colourful addition to the soil. Even though I picked up quite a few beads last year I visited, I only now realized the were all Prosser beads. Considering I am working on finishing a small book on beads from Briare and comparing them to Czech made Prosser beads, this was a nice suprise.

This is an important document, it feels like a sad transition in the glass bead industry of Czech Republic. I remember the excitement of what we thought of as a production renaissance - at the retail level here in the States, it was in the late 90s.

...of your interesting travels...!! Thanks for sharing this with us and thanks for the sent images! I will let you know, what comes up, but it will take a while...and take me on your subscription list for the books, please...!!
So many impressive people here...I love it...

Like Joyce mentioned, I remember when great quantities of Czech beads suddenly came onto the market in the 1990s. The local bead store added a room to display a large shipment that arrived all at once. Prior to that I had been buying a few Czech and German beads from Ava Motherwell at trunk shows... very high prices for reputedly rare beads.

So, it is a bit sad to realize the waning state of the bead industry there. I had wanted to believe that hundreds of small, home based industries had sprung up in place of the big factories. Total conjecture on my part... I see now the big factories were very important to local employment. It is not just the beads that are lost, but also the formulas, equipment, and techniques. Somebody has to know how to make the compatible glass used to make the canes that make the millefiori that make the beads.

What is happening with independent Czech bead makers? Do they have a co-operative or trade association, or do they struggle on their own?

Here is some of what I know....
It is true that in the 1990' many smaller and large companies started. People who worked at the large factories before started their own business. However, this setting up was a sow process. I would not be surprised if the sudden great quantities were actually old stock? As I said, before old stock would not be sold for lower prices, but perhaps after 1989 it was?

The quality of pressed, faceted and waxed beads coming from China at low prices has gone up quickly in the last decade. India is making lampwork beads at incredibly low prices. It is this competition that is making it difficult to produce a fairly labour intensive product at competitive prices in a European country.
Things were already bad in Jablonec in the last 10 years or so, but after Jablonex closed its doors in 1995, and sold it's big machines off to Asia, things went even quicker. Lots of jobs were lost.

A major issue, apart from the Asian competition, is the current lack of a major international distributor. Jablonex had offices around the world, but now, there is not one exporting company. All the little companies have to work on this themselves. After 1989 an organisation of bijoux and businesses was set up. In the last year they have been very busy. In a wing of the old Jablonex building now goods from many different companies are sold. They have set up a trademark, 'Made in Jablonec', and are trying to market all the bijoux and beads with this trademark. I have met with the president of this organisation. He will send me more information. He was an optimistic man, claiming that even though many jobs have been lost in the last years, the worst is over. According to him, business is getting better already, and Arab countries, South American countries, but also France and Spain are increasingly placing orders. However, he was the only one I spoke to with such an optimistic view.

One man I spoke to had a very simple view when I asked him why the business was struggling. To him it was obvious: 'Because we kicked everybody who knew anything about bead and bijouxmaking out of this country in 1945'. His own brother was working in Neugablonz, the town where many expelled Germans set up the business after 1945.

I visited Neugablonz in Germany last year. Here too, bead business has slowed down so much that it is almost nonexistent. However, in both Jablonec en Neugablonz, it seems that the production of glass items, metal and chemical processes like galvanisation that are not for the bijoux business are not doing so bad.
Only time will tell what will really happen. I expect that the large production of pressed beads will cease. Special types of maybe seed beads and handmade lampwork beads may still be made on a smaller scale, as specialty items. This will however only be able to sustain several hundred people, instead of the tens of thousands it was before. It will slowly become a craft that people will come to see, and buy special and unique items from, just like blacksmiths and woodcarvers. Could be very wrong here, but that seems like a likely outcome to me.

and at the high end of the glass bead manufacturing market by contrast is the family business of Swarovski originally only in Austria but now I believe they have factories in the far East -still very secretive but productive and not diminishing because they kept their brand image as luxury fashion ingredients and have recently intensified their development of related quality products such as new shapes, colours, new pearl finishes, and their range of twinkly jewelled fabric-like metal meshes, etc.
"Jablonex" itself was never exactly a desireable brand...

I remember as a child visiting the world expo held in Brussels (in was it 1956?) and seeing the lampwork and other forms of Bohemian glassware in the Czech pavilion. I dont remember beads but there must surely have been some...

What makes the different current routes between Jablonex/Jablonec and Swarovski even more remarkable, is that Swarovski actually started in Jablonec. This is where he was born (into a glassmaking family) and this is where he learned and developed his skills. At this time, Bohemia was part of the Austrian empire. He did not leave the area until after he had made this new factetting machine and patented it. He moved away to a more secluded area at the time so he could work without the risk of other beadmakers in Jablonec taking over his technique.

I think Preciosa does have a better name than Jablonex had, and Preciosa is now the largest company in the area. They mostly make seed beads.

I bought some old magazines with advertising and marketing stuff from Jablonex. I will scan and photograph some of it, to take you back to the 50's and 60's...... Perhapis I can even find something from the Brussels expo.

I have been in bed with a nasty cold for the past week so this is the first time that I have had a chance to make a few observations on Czech beads. First, thank you floorkasp for the great photo tour of the Czech bead manufacturers.

Most of my design work is done with seed beads (both Japanese and Czech), bugle beads, fire-polished beads, and pressed leaves and flowers. There was nothing but Czech seed beads when I started beading. Much as I like the Czech beads, I can see why they have fallen out of favor. Here are a few of my observations, if they will be of any help.

A) For seed beads, the competition is not the Chinese but is the Japanese manufactures. The Chinese seed beads are of low quality and are not used by beaders who have serious money to spend. Lately, the Chinese are going after Swarovski with their copies of shiny crystals so I am not sure how that affects the not-Swarovski part of the industry.

B) The Japanese, on the other hand, make lovely, precise beads with larger holes. Everyone has learned that while the Japanese beads may seem expensive, there is very little waste in terms of bad beads. People like the bigger holes in the seed beads, especially helpful for today’s fashion of intricate bead-woven components with seed beads and Swarovski crystals that require many passes of the needle through a hole. The Japanese manufactures have seed beads in many lovely colors and are constantly improving the durability of dyed and galvanized beads. If I need metallic beads, I head straight for Miyuki or Toho permanent-finish beads. They are also introducing new shapes like the Tila or magatama drops; innovation is a big point with the Japanese.

C) As mentioned by Birdi, distribution is a large problem. Both Toho and Miyuki have a booth and accompanying publicity at the monstrous Bead and Button show in Milwaukee. At their booth, employees showcase next year’s new beads and pass out sample cards and packets to people. When I asked where I could find the about-to-be-released Tila beads last year, the gentlemen pulled out a list and told me which major retailers would have them and when. Toho even throws a large party for designers and other industry leaders every other year at Bead and Button. The Japanese manufacturers also work with designers to figure out what the market wants. Most of the retail vendors at B&B who sell seed beads sell Japanese beads. Every now and then, there will be someone who has Czech beads but the selection is not great.

D) It is almost impossible to find Czech beads on a retail basis. For instance, here NYC there are 6 Asian-run bead stores that I can think of right off the bat within a few block radius in the bead district that sell Japanese and Chinese seed beads retail (and wholesale if you ask). If I want Czech seed beads, my choice is to buy them on a wholesale basis from Harman Import or York or buy half-kilos from City Beads at a retail price. York Beads recently renovated their store so I am not sure if they still have a few hanks of Czech seed beads for retail sale. M&J no longer sells hanks of Czech beads. If I am working up a design, I may not want to have to spend $125 an order to buy Czech beads that I may not use and I may not be able to get the beads I want anyway. It is just so much easier to grab some Japanese beads.

E) On the subject of designers, the Czech manufacturers have a reputation of being unreliable in terms of supply. I have personally had some major designers tell me that they have found lovely Czech seed beads but haven’t used them in designs for classes because they couldn’t be sure that they could get a continuing supply for kits. I have had that happen to me as well with striped beads for my bead crochet snakes. Leslie Frazier introduced us to Czech pinch beads in a class that I took from her and everyone thought they were great but I have yet to find them in any meaningful quantity.

I like Czech beads but given the problems with publicity, lack of availability, and a reputation as being unreliable, the Czech bead industry has a lot of work ahead of them if they hope to improve business or even continue.

Thank you for writing down your observations. I know very little of the 'seedbeading world'. I tried to meet with people from Preciosa, but did not succeed. They are the main makers of seed beads now in the Czech Republic. Apparantly the Japanese beads are the best available right now. I do think there is competition on seed beads from China as well. Not when it comes to quality beads for designers, but in the bulk used for cheap jewelry? I saw one of the wholesalers in Jablonec having swapped its seed beads to Chinese seed beads. They are incredibly cheap. Most are of very low quality though

I recognize your account of the availability in New York. Most shops sell Asian beads. Also thinking of Tucson, there were very few sellers there representing Czech beads.

I was wondering what you can say about the distribution and availability over time. It seems to me that Jablonex had a pretty organised system for production, which would make them capable of being reliable in supplying. Is the unreliability you mention something that has always been there, even before 1989, or is is something that is increasing?

Something that I was told from one of the local companies is that they saw themselves as lacking in flexibility. Not being quick enough to adapt to new trends. That matches your impression, especially when compared to the Czechs. Not sure here, what is stopping the Czechs here from getting it right. Perhaps they are simply relying on tradition too much.

Finally: would love to see some examples of your work.......

You may be correct that the Chinese seed beads are supplanting the Czech in cases of cheap jewelry manufacture; I'm afraid I know very little about that end of the bead business.
My contact with the bead world really started in 1982 when I was working at one of the premier theatrical costume shops in NYC. We bought Czech beads on a wholesale basis in town to make gorgeous beaded costumes for Broadway and movies. At that time there were a number of bead shops in the garment district like Harman Imports or M&J that kept stock in the stores so you could just walk in, place an order, and leave with your beads.
I don't remember much of a supply problem then, although I do remember the folks at Harman complaining that sometimes the beads that arrived bore little resemblance to the order that they placed. I once bought a half-kilo of purple Ab 11/0 seed beads that Harman had received but not ordered because it was so unusual compared to the other Czech beads being sold. Even though, there were supply problems in general, there were enough Czech beads coming into the country that it wasn't a big problem.
In 1987, I started doing beaded jewelry as well as costume work and paid more attention to retail bead sales. At that point, the Japanese beads were just starting to attract attention from amateur beaders. For garment and costume work, the Czech beads were still preferred because they were cheaper and also came pre-strung. If you are doing tambour beading, it is faster to transfer beads from a hank of Czech beads to the thread you will be using than to string individual Japanese seed beads. Stores like M&J and Metropolitan still had a large selection of Czech beads for retail sale as well as wholesale.
As the popularity of the Japanese beads grew throughout the 1990s, we saw more Japanese beads and fewer Czech beads for sale on the retail level. Some of the wholesale businesses like Harman moved out of the city or closed all together (like Metropolitan). That may have also been tied to companies moving their clothing factories overseas; fewer garment manufactures in the city means fewer customers needing beads and fewer beads available.
There has been a gradual decline in the availability of Czech seed beads since the mid-1990s but I think it has gotten worse in the past 5 years. I am hoping that Preciosa will take inspiration from Swarovski and push Czech seed beads as a old-world, quality item as Swarovski did with their crystal beads. I know that the charlottes are still held in high regard by beaders and they search for those at the bead shows. It would be a shame if the Czech manufacturers can’t figure out some way to improve their sales because there is a place in the bead world for their beads.
I will include a few examples of my beadwork in another post. Right now, I need to rest a bit--darn cold.

Hi Adele, Floor......

I was the first employee of General Bead in their San Francisco store when they opened in 1982, staying until 1990 - I have written about those years before, mostly about the influx of India - made glass beads, perhaps.

The owners of General Bead have been in the business since the older brother, an economics major in college in Michigan, decided that a small art supply business would help him get through school in the late 1960s. The beads took off, and Michael moved to California, and two stores grew wildly successful in the 80s and 90s. The older brother has recently retired, closed the San Diego store and the San Francisco store remains a bead destination not to miss.

Regarding specifically seed beads - by the time I arrived in 1982, there was a well established business in both Czech AND Japanese beads. And, there was a small selection of the vintage Salvadori beads from Lyon brought in by Pierre Bovis.

Different clientele preferred different beads for their own reasons. Native Americans for the most part wanted Czech seed beads, because they looked more like the beads used in the traditional work. Some of those folks also loved the French beads, particularly the "old time colors" because they closely replicated beads from 100 or so years ago.

I started doing beadwork with seed beads in 1983 and immediately liked the Japanese seed beads for all the reasons Adele explains. General Bead had already dealt with Miyuki for a long time, but not in the Delicas, yet. They focused on the size 11/0 seed beads as those seemed most in demand then. I don't remember the minimum, but it was fairly large, even to split between the 2 stores. Something like 50 kilos per color. It was a big deal when an order arrived, and we
took turns packaging. Most were put into 40 gram packs. Some more expensive ones into 20 gram packs. The beads are shipped loose, not strung like the Czech seed beads. An electronic scale helps a lot!

Some designers, like Susan Greene in those days, were buying the Japanese beads by the kilo to use in their long multi-strand necklaces. They'd use them in unique color mixes along with pendants - still attractive now.

The Czech beads were still in use plenty in those days. The wildly loved rock band The Grateful Dead had a substantial "beader underground" that seems largely forgotten. Whenever the Dead were in town, especially for the New Year's Eve shows, General Bead was VERY busy! There were as many as 8 of us behind the counters in those days. Patchouli scented kids in tie-dyes and dreadlocks seemed to pile out of Volkswagon vans from all over the country! And lots of these "bead girls", as we used to call them, loved the Czech size 12/0 tricuts, as well as the size 9/0 tricuts. We had some Japanese tricut beads, but they weren't quite the same. The Japanese seed beads were still well received due to the wide selection of colors and finishes.

The very desirable Charlotte Cuts, made in Czechoslovakia, were the most difficult to obtain. The Native Americans loved these because they were used in much of the very best beaded work on buckskin in the late 19th c. They look fabulous in this work. Back in the 80s, I was told that they only did a production run of each color of Charlottes once every 5 years. In those days, availability of the Czech beads was so bad that bead stores were on waiting lists to obtain specific colors from the main source General Bead used at the time, Elliot Greene in NYC. I remember what a big deal it was to get black Charlottes, because everyone wanted them. And then, when General Bead got mauve pink (aka "Cheyenne Pink") for the first time, it was such a big deal, that we had to limit the amount sold to any one person so that more people could have a chance to get some. The supply issue was so weird, that we just decided that the Czech industry must not care about demand or making much money! We figured they didn't need the business back then.

I have posted before about the fact that General Bead was the first importer in the U. S. for the Miyuki Delica beads. While they had dealt with Miyuki for years, it was thought for a long time (I guess by both Miyuki and General Bead) that the Delicas would not do well in this country! I believe the Delicas first arrived in 1988 or 1989. These beads have been wildly successful and are responsible for an almost viral trend in seed beading within the last 20 years. They are wonderfully uniform, and the need to "cull" is almost nonexistent, helping to compensate for the higher price.

My personal favorite seed beads remain the Czech tricuts. The iridescent and bronze finishes on these are very long lasting and the holes are larger than the smooth Czech seed beads. I still have my stash of tricuts. beads. But over the years I have sold most of my Japanese beads.

Russ will hopefully be able to share lots of info from his perspective, as he has lived through all of these trends and changes as a dealer / importer.

well, surely i cant be the only one here who remembers Peter Francis giving a talk about Czech seed bead manufacture after his visit to Jablonec where he showed how they were made in a very tall factory building so the hot glass tubes were formed and elongated not by pulling but rather with the help of gravity, being dangled from a height!
This was before the time when it was easy or generally possible to see inside the Czech system... possibly early '90s.

I have always wounder about these seed beads and how they came to be from Western-Germany. Now it makes sense.
Thanks

floorkasp, I finally had a minute to dredge up some photos of my seed bead work. Unfortunately I can't show you what I am working on currently because they are slated for publication but here are a few exapmles of my work.

One more photo. These earring are based on the Turkish crocheted lace technique known as oya.