Page:Guide to the Bohemian section and to the Kingdom of Bohemia - 1906.djvu/139

113 ciative of this variety of personal adornment than their fair sisters of the occident. Their use is of great antiquity for they are found in the most ancient of the Egyptian tombs.

That the making of such things should be undertaken by Bohemians whose glass-making in other forms is famous, was but natural and presented no difficulies to the villagers who adopted the trade.

It is in the districts of NOVÁ PAKA and KRÁLOVÉ DVŮR (Königinhof) an area of about 70 km. that this industry is carried on. In these parts there are over 1200 persons employed in this branch of glass blowing. The rule is, for the master to buy the glass tubes from the works in Bohemia or Moravia and to sell them in the required quantities to the journeymen. White beads, are made in the largest quantities, and to watch the operations of the workmen is most interesting and instructive. The men sit at tables furnished with a blowing apparatus to which are fitted pipes for blowing the flame of the lamp upon the glass. By means of the pointed flame; which can be easily regulated by the operator, the glass-blower on getting his material heated to the required degree, draws the tube until he gets it to the thickness wanted for the particular bead in hand; and which may be any of the sizes known in the trade by numbers 00 to 20, these correspond with the fixed number of millimeters of the diameter of the bead. The thin tube is then cut into short pieces, to blow these, the man closes one end of the tube by melting it in the flame, he then blows a ball of the required size and by a second operation of blowing, makes a hole in the ball and severs the finished bead with a specially formed knife. These beads vary in form, oval and flat as well as round are made for hair and hat-pins. A flat kind is also produced by a quick touch of the bare finger on the glowing soft glass. A workmen sitting in the low room of his timber hut can blow any number from 3000 to 6000 in a day, after which during the evening hours, he goes on with the work of sorting and weighing.

For a thousand beads a journeyman gets; according to class of goods, from 2½ to 5 d. After deducting his expenses the average earnings of a workman amount to 1 s 5 d for a day of not less than 10 hours. 8