Four major companies in America continued to produce snow globes of varying quality and subject including souvenirs, but also holiday globes and novelty gifts. It was a similar landscape in Europe, with a few manufacturers dominating the snow globe scene. By the 1980s, snow globes were still a staple of the gift industry, but they’d also become the epitome of kitsch—probably because everyone and everything from Disney’s Bambi to the Lone Ranger to Niagara Falls and the White House could be put under glass and forced to endure frequent and bewildering snowstorms. But what does the market look like today? Oddly enough, snow globes remain big business. There is a sizable collector’s market for both antique and novelty domes. And Erwin Perzy III’s company is still healthy. The Vienna shop produces upwards of 200,000 snow globes a year, and that’s just a small part of the market. It’s perhaps a mark of how familiar a form a snow globe is, and what innocent—almost saccharine—kitsch they’re meant to be that they can be so gleefully perverted, as this collection of weird, macabre, and wonderful snow globes demonstrates.
Snow globes are supposed to remind you of the swirling flurries of a gentle winter storm, and while most snow-based experiences are positive, too much cold can be deadly—as Etsy seller BubbleRoll’s snow globe featuring a frozen Jack Torrance from the end of The Shining reminds us. The Great Elder One will be pleased with you if you leave this tribute to him resting on your mantel. Along the base of this snow globe from Fear Werx is the ominous Necronomicon quote: “That is not dead which can eternal lie and with strange aeons even death may die.” It’s going to be a very scary Christmas this year thanks to this delightful snow globe from Things From Another World Comics filled with zombie carolers. Extra details at custom snow globe.
A few years later, a Viennese man Edwin Perzy developed the same idea when researching a way to improve operating room lights. A glass globe filled with water creates a magnifying lens by increasing refraction. To enhance the reflected light, Perzy put ground glass in the water. When it quickly sank, he tried semolina which floated slowly to the bottom of the globe. It did nothing to improve the light quality, but the snowfall inspired him to make his first snow globe: a reproduction of a Viennese shrine in a glass bulb with water, magnesium powder and rock. The snow domes were exquisitely and painstakingly produced and are still in production today where they make around 200,000 a year outside of Vienna.
Many Americans decorated their trees with imported ornaments up until World War II. Before World War II, many ornaments Americans purchased were imported from Germany. But once World War II started, Corning, an American glass company, started making ornaments out of a light bulb machine. They made 300,000 ornaments a day! The legend behind stockings involves a sweet story about Santa doing something really nice for a poor family. The common legend about Christmas stockings (which has an unknown source and date, according to Smithsonian Magazine) tells a tale of a poor, widowed man who had three young daughters that he worried would never marry due to their lack of wealth. St. Nick overheard people chatting about this family, so he slid down the man’s chimney and placed gold coins in the girls’ clean stockings that were hanging to dry by the fireplace. Source: https://www.qstomize.com/collections/custom-snow-globe.
