By RADAL NIEDZIELSKI
CZĘSTOCHOWA, Poland (AP) — In the event you may design a bauble on your personal Christmas tree, what would it not be — a teddy bear dressed as a ballerina, a hummingbird, or a crimson phoenix?
The employees at GlitterLab, an organization producing Christmas decorations in southern Poland, vow to show these fantasies into actuality.
Calling themselves “the magicians of glass,” their shoppers have included Swarovski, the French chain Galeries Lafayette, and Harrods, the long-lasting London division retailer.
“We have now the flexibility to create shapes and designs that tumbler won’t usually take,” the corporate guarantees on its web site.
And the entire manufacturing course of, “our carefully guarded commerce secret,” is guide, making every product distinctive, it says.
“In an age when you should buy something anyplace for subsequent to nothing, one thing produced from scratch right here in a European nation, with trustworthy work and thoughtfulness, is actually valued by prospects,” firm proprietor Barbara Mostowska informed The Related Press.
‘In our DNA’
Regardless of its modest look, GlitterLab’s workshop has been working for greater than 80 years in Częstochowa, a city of 200,000 in southern Poland.
It was based by Mostowska’s grandparents within the aftermath of World Warfare II, making her the third era within the household to handle the enterprise.
“They produced glass cigarette holders, then ‘eprouvettes’ — I believe that’s the phrase — tiny bottles for cake flavors,” Barbara Mostowska stated, fondly reminiscing about how the workshop operated when she was a toddler.
“After which tiny baubles, then slow-blown baubles, those everyone knows from childhood, some swans, mushrooms, pine cones, that kind of factor,” she recalled.
When the corporate accessed the U.S. market, it began producing extra molded ornaments, similar to angels or Santa Claus.
On its web site, the agency additionally attracts from the historical past of the city, the place an area monastery holds the icon of the Black Madonna, an essential object of Catholic devotion because the 14th century. Pilgrims visiting the icon would come again dwelling with souvenirs made by native artisans.
“We’re their heirs,” the house owners of GlitterLab declare. “The strategies we’re utilizing can’t merely be realized. They should run in your DNA.”
The corporate’s mixture of artisanal strategies, new applied sciences and savvy advertising may be very profitable. One in all their unique designs for Harrods, the “Yellow Floral Bauble,” is priced at 125 kilos (round $168).
It’s Mostowska’s dream that the ornaments gained’t simply be displayed on the Christmas, however as a substitute “our prospects have them of their properties, whether or not on hangers or in show circumstances, year-round.”
The corporate’s merchandise are “jewellery for the house,” she stated.
Completely happy work
To create a novel design, GlitterLab employees take a consumer’s drawing on paper and switch it at first right into a comfortable clay sculpture, which might be modified till the consumer’s imaginative and prescient is precisely represented.
Solely then do they select the distinctive mixture of supplies that transforms a selected form right into a bauble.
Mariola Koła, the corporate’s most seasoned designer, has been working for 42 years at GlitterLab. She says essentially the most satisfying second in her day comes when a consumer approves a design with “no corrections.”
“It means I’ve met their expectations, their style,” she says. “That’s the best pleasure for me. I couldn’t ask for a better reward.”
The designers work not solely with glass however with supplies like resin, wooden, crystals, and steel, enabling them to craft shapes that transcend typical baubles.
However the merchandise additionally inform a narrative, usually invoking childhood nostalgia.
“Hungry for sweets and play,” says the outline of a teddy bear holding a gulf membership, a part of a sequence of comparable figures in several poses. “These Teddy Bears are a time machine to a contented childhood when nothing tasted as candy as sweet floss licked straight from sticky fingers.”
Amid a heavy actuality, a return to childhood and the enjoyment of play could also be exactly what Christmas requires.
“The purchasers are good, as a result of how can individuals get upset and be offended or imply once we’re speaking about Christmas baubles?” Magdalena Kucharska, the corporate’s customer support consultant, wonders.
“The truth that we produce a product that brings happiness means these prospects are good too, and it’s a really nice job.”
