We all walked to the Museum of Glass Jewelry for a wonderful hour of browsing the beads, buttons, jewelry and glassware collections on display. First class. With over 8 million items in the collection, most are hidden in the basement.
Hollow blown glass beads
Some of the collection from Fried Freres from France.
Lovely metal insect buttons
Peacock eye buttons - a favorite of one of our friends. (J-ME loves these in beads also)
Egypt-maina jewelry
Equipment and tools in the museum
While two of our group stayed behind to view the museum collection at their leisure, the rest of us piled on a bus rented for the day by Pavel, our next appointment. He lives about an hour away in a beautiful village next to his warehouse which he is in the process of installing all the machinery needed to press, facet, fire polish, tumble and coat beads.
Until then, all his product was spread out outside in his garden, and in three rooms inside his house. (just incase it started to rain - which it didn't).
Even though most of us had purchased enough beads to last a life time, we all loaded up with more. Some of us went back 2 or 3 times, Phaedra!
Then we drove back to the hotel while I learnt to make coffee in a moving bus on winding mountain roads at a fast speed. (I'm pretty good at it).
On our way we passed this old house, which we can imagine might have been owned by a factory owner. It just needs some tender loving care to get back to what it used to look like. Can you just imagine it?
Our friend Christa arrived at the hotel with two large suitcases stuffed with button sample cards, beads and other things from her rapidly diminishing private collection of over 20 years, which she proceeded to sell off to us in a money raising effort to fund her next spa holiday. I think she will be able to go.
Finally Petra showed up with all our purchases from a couple of days ago for payment and invoice settlement. Wallets started to empty of 1000 crown bills at an alarming rate, but our smiles remained. Money can be printed at Kinko's any old time, but the buttons and beads we purchased are all special to each of us.
Last but not least, some of us stayed in, and some us us carpooled to a pub/steakhouse Petra recommended for dinner only to find out it was full so we shuttled to another steakhouse in two trips for an enjoyable meal with Chris getting a metal skewer from his meal as a gift from the waiter.
One last late night shopping spree in our room as we all dug through a box of old Bohemian jewelry offered by the grandmother of a friend in town who wanted to raise some money from unwanted stashes of old jewelry. Some nice finds were uncovered at really good prices.
Good night.
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