kugels

**Image found online from a long ago auction somewhere.**
**This is a red German kugel. I think it’s marvelous!**

Everyone who knows me, knows I love Christmas. Some of my favorite antique ornaments are kugels. That started when I was given a modestly sized golden kugel that had been the prized ornament of my maternal great grandfather’s mother. They were Germans who settled in Pennsylvania. This ornament came with my great grandfather’s mother’s family from Germany.

A true antique kugel is a heavy glass Christmas ornament, made in Germany from the mid-1800s to the early 1900s. They are typically round or oval, made of thick glass with a brass cap. The glass is often colored deeply in shades like deep red, cobalt blue, or silver. At first they were made only in Germany, primarily made in Lauscha, Germany, a small mountain village known for its glassblowing in the German Thuringia Forest .

Then, in at the end of the 19th century (as in the last decade approximately), the center of kugel manufacturing actually shifted to Nancy, France. The decorations that came out of this region were a bit lighter in weight than their German predecessors and boasted new shades, such as tangerine, and many shades of blue. (Hence the French blue kugel of it all.)

From a random website based I am not sure where (Switzerland?) I learned more:

What is known as kugels are the ancestors of the later Christmas glass ornaments. Kugel is the German word for sphere or ball. In Germany kugels are usually called Biedermeierkugeln what refers to their time of origin, namely the Biedermeier period (about 1830). At that time German glassmakers started a tradition which lasted almost until to the beginning of World War I.

One way to identify kugels is by their enormous thickness of glass. This may go from one up to five millimeters, that is from 1/25″ to 1/5″. Before the invention of the Bunsen burner it was technically not possible to produce a thin-walled glass. Therefore kugels are rather heavyweight (a problem for Christmas trees with thin branches). Coloration is not done, as in later times, by painting the glass surface, but by coloring the melted batch in advance. Inside silvering of the kugels produced a brilliant gloss; this was done with lead in the early days, afterwards with a solution of silver nitrate. Unlike later glass ornaments kugels do not have the short pike left from the blowing process. It was cut off. What remained was a small hole. This was covered with a brass cap which was fastened to the ornament by a skillfully twisted wire.

One is inclined to believe that all kugels have got the shape of a ball as their name suggests. But there are, though more seldom, other shapes, too: grapes, eggs, pears, drop, turnips, and bells. In addition the surface has not to be even: items with a ribbed surface are the most sought-after. The color palette is confined to a tight dozen variations: silver, green in different shadows, golden (frequent), light blue, blue, cobalt blue (more rare), rose, rubin, copper (rare), orange, violet (very rare). Tiny kugels have a diameter of about one inch, while the upper limit is more or less open ended: There exist items with a perimeter of more than three feet (best suited for the decoration of the large garden fir tree).

**Another image from some long ago auction somewhere in this country –**
**I think this was from a New York auction.**

Originally kugels came to the US either via Germans visiting family or immigrating here. They were from the old English tradition of “witches balls”, can’t remember if I mentioned that before? Then F.W. Woolworth, yes the five and dime store of our childhoods, started importing them in the 1880s.

https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/roadshow/articles/ornaments-of-christmas-past

Here is a great piece from Bunch Auctions about kugels:

https://www.bunchauctions.com/single-post/the-german-kugel-a-christmas-tradition:

Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, whose birthplace was located within 50 miles of Thuringia, helped to spread the popularity of tree decorating when he and his wife, Queen Victoria, were depicted trimming the royal family Christmas tree (most likely with German-made ornaments) in an engraving published by the Illustrated London News.

From Martha Stewart a few years ago:

https://www.marthastewart.com/1532933/history-antique-kugel-christmas-ornaments

From the Golden Glow of Christmas Past: