Bohemian Glass and Crystal

The north Bohemian hills had everything glass needs: quartz sand, potash from beech ash and endless firewood, and the industry that grew there shaped the whole region. Novy Bor and Kamenicky Senov became centres of cutting, engraving and coloured overlay, and both hold long-established glassmaking schools whose students still fill the local workshops. Jablonec nad Nisou went a different way, into pressed beads, buttons and costume jewellery, and keeps a museum of glass and jewellery to show for it. Harrachov in the Krkonose has a works with its own museum. In several places you can stand at a demonstration furnace and watch a piece blown, gathered and cut from start to finish.

What you actually see

• The Novy Bor glass museum - engraved goblets, overlay colour and chandelier work across four centuries.
• A demonstration furnace - blowing, gathering and shaping watched from a few metres away.
• Jablonec beads and jewellery - pressed glass, buttons and costume pieces in a museum built on them.
• Blown glass ornaments - the bead-and-wire Christmas decorations still made by hand at Ponikla.

When to go

Year round, though works tours run on weekdays when the furnaces are hot and often need booking a few days ahead. Autumn and winter suit a day among furnaces better than August heat. The Christmas ornament workshops are busiest from autumn onward, and a glass symposium brings extra furnaces to life in Novy Bor every few years.

Honest expectations

Much of the crystal sold in Prague's centre is machine pressed or imported and marked up hard; the term is not protected, so anything can be called Bohemian. Real hand-cut lead crystal is heavy and costs accordingly. Factory tours run on working days only and are usually in Czech. The glass towns themselves are plain industrial places with little else to fill a day.

Nearby

The Lusatian Mountains and the sandstone country of north Bohemia.