HISTORY OF SNOW GLOBES

Entertainment, Games, History 3 Minutes

You place the dome in your hand, turn it over and beautifully, magically the item inside is engulfed in a swirling slow-motion blizzard. Everyone can relate to them – evoking a childhood memory or nostalgia of a simpler time. The first mention of a snow globe featured a man with an umbrella displayed at the Paris Exposition of 1878. It was later suggested that the globes were created to commemorate the Tower’s inauguration.

This extremely rare LouisVuitton Eiffel Tower dome made of luggage is a whimsical example that sold for $995 in 2017.

A few years later, a Viennese man Edwin Perzy developed the same idea when researching a way to improve operating room light..He used a glass globe filled with water, hoping to create 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: he carved a small house and inserted it into the globe.

Edwin Perzy

Facsimile of Perzy’s first globe used in Citizen Kane

Mass production began in the US during the 1920s. Joseph Garaja of Pittsburgh was granted a patent in 1927, which altered how snow globes were made. His method needed the spheres to be assembled underwater, removing any trapped air. This ingenious method made it possible for the industry to go into mass production, which drastically lowered the prices of globes.

However, by the early 1960s, glass snow globes had been overtaken by plastic Hong Kong-made globes. It was soon discovered that the water in their spheres was filthy, obtained directly from their port. As a result, a Hong Kong snow globe producer got into significant trouble and was temporarily barred from entering the United States.

The “snow” in snow globes has a fascinating backstory as well. Snow was previously created in glass domes using tiny porcelain, bone chips, or ground rice. Camphor/wax, as well as meerschaum, was also used to make these snowflakes. Today, most “snow” is tiny particles or shards of white plastic. Also, the liquid hasn’t always been water; at one point, light oil was used. In addition, glycol (antifreeze) was added to help with the problem of freezing during winter shipping.

The snow globe fell out of favor in the 1970’s when it epitomized kitsch –but have evolved into something more sophisticated, intricate and valued among designers and collectors. Novelty gift manufacturers have upgraded the designs and components making them unique gift items often including beautifully modelled landscapes.

Some incorporate lights, music and motors eliminating the need for shaking. Many high-end department stores introduce a custom design every year to commemorate the Christmas season.

Snow globes have become an increasingly popular collectible for both antique and novelty globes. Actor, Corbin Bernsen may be the most prolific collector with about 8,000 – he began collecting snow globes in the ‘80’s. “There’s something that happens to a collector, this internal voice that says, ‘I want to have one of each that is in existence,’” Bernsen says.

Corbin Bernsen

Originally the globes were made of glass and the figures inside were made of porcelain, bone, metals, minerals, rubber or wax. The snow or “flitter” as it’s called, could have been ground rice, wax, soap, sand, bone fragments, meerschaum, metal flakes or sawdust. Producers tried everything. The base was either round or square and may have been of stone, marble, ceramic or wood. Some are quite bizarre!!!

“Snow domes are not only fascinating to look at, to hold, to play with, they are folk art,” says collector Nancy McMichael, author of Snowdomes (Abbeville Press). “They are a bridge back to an idealized past we think existed but is actually in our head. It is something we carry with us.”

Published by NebraskaFilly

Army veteran (1976-1979), retired with entirely too much time on my hands

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216 thoughts on “HISTORY OF SNOW GLOBES”

  1. Liked by 2 people

  5. Alabama joins Louisiana is pulling out of ERIC…how many more states will do the same?
    entire article
    Alabama’s Secretary of State-elect Wes Allen has announced that he will withdraw the state from the Electronic Registration Information Center (ERIC), a voter-roll management system with politically compromised ties.

    “I made a promise that I would withdraw Alabama from ERIC and I am keeping that promise,” Allen said in a statement. “I have informed them, via certified letter, that upon my inauguration on January 16, 2023, Alabama will immediately and permanently cease to transmit any information regarding any citizen in the State of Alabama to their organization and that we will no longer participate in any aspect of the ERIC program.”

    As previously reported, ERIC is a voter-roll management organization used by 33 states which ostensibly exists to identify duplicate or deceased registrants (by cross-referencing states’ voter and DMV records) and thereby “clean” state voter rolls. Alabama joined ERIC in 2015 and currently pays about $25,000 a year for its membership.

    However, member states may not realize ERIC was started by far-left political activist David Becker, who has dedicated his life to attacking conservatives and advancing left-wing policies. Becker also started the Center for Election Innovation and Research (CEIR), one of two leftist groups that funneled $419 million in grants from Mark Zuckerberg to mostly blue counties of swing states, funding Democratic get-out-the-vote operations from government election offices in 2020. ERIC shares voter roll data – including records of unregistered citizens – with CEIR, which then reportedly creates targeted mailing lists for unregistered but likely Democrat voters and sends them back to the states for voter registration outreach.

    Additionally, per government watchdog Verity Vote, ERIC doesn’t actually clean states’ voter rolls, but rather inflates them. Though member states are allegedly required to clean their voter rolls, nothing happens. A March 2022 audit by Michigan’s auditor general found the state’s Bureau of Elections failed to sufficiently clean its voter rolls, though Michigan had joined ERIC in 2019. Likewise, the District of Columbia (another ERIC member) has also been sued for its failure to clean its rolls.

    While Alabama’s outgoing secretary of state, John Merrill, has repeatedly signaled his support for ERIC, Allen campaigned on removing the state from the system. Instead of relying on ERIC to clean Alabama’s voter rolls, Allen plans on using change-of-address information from the United States Postal Service, driver’s license records from the Alabama Law Enforcement Agency, and death records from the Alabama Department of Public Health to maintain accurate rolls.

    Alabama is the second ERIC member state to withdraw from the pact. Louisiana suspended its participation in January over similar concerns.

    https://thefederalist.com/2022/11/21/alabama-withdraws-from-democrat-operative-controlled-voter-registration-database/

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  6. hey Filly?
    see this tweet???
    it’s about David DePape being piglosi’s daughter’s camera man on 1/6

    Liked by 1 person

  7. Liked by 1 person

  8. since SCOTUS ruled the house ways & means committee can have REALPOTUS’S tax returns….

    j x
    November 22, 2022 3:48 pm
    Reply to vikingmom

    These are the Democrats on the House Ways and Means Cmte. The incoming Congress must demand their tax records.

    Richard Neal
    Lloyd Doggett
    Mike Thompson
    John Larson
    Earl Blumenauer
    Ron Kind
    Bill Pascrell
    Danny Davis
    Linda Sánchez
    Brian Higgins
    Terri Sewell
    Suzan DelBene
    Judy Chu
    Gwen Moore
    Daniel Kildee
    Brendan Boyle
    Donald Beyer
    Dwight Evans
    Bradley Schneider
    Thomas Suozzi
    Jimmy Panetta
    Stephanie Murphy
    Jimmy Gomez
    Steven Horsford
    Stacey Plaskett

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  9. Liked by 1 person

  13. Ok bring this. It’s an hour long.
    It’s good but graphic
    Truth be told there’s nothing new for us.
    But seeing the blood clots like rubber bands and dirty blood…yeah don’t eat while watching this

    They call the vax a bio weapon and these people evil since they always push the depop.

    Will this get people to wake up…I’m not sure.

    Liked by 2 people

  32. “Newsmax Gets It Wrong on Colorado Springs Shooting”
    by Bob Adelmann November 22, 2022

    ENTIRE ARTICLE @ NewAmerican: “Just hours after the horrific mass shooting at Club Q — a gay and lesbian nightclub in Colorado Springs — Eric Mack, a journalist with Newsmax, did the automatic thing: he reached out to the Gun Violence Archive (GVA) for some data. Without analyzing the actual data Mack appeared to be content with simply adding up all their “Mass Shootings in 2022” and wrote this: ‘After a week of a pair of mass shootings — an LGBTQ club in Colorado and the University of Virginia — the U.S. total has gone over 600 for the year at a record-setting pace, according to Gun Violence Archive data.’ Mack added, “A mass shooting is defined as one where four or more people are injured or killed by firearms, which does not include the shooter being stopped.”

    It was easy then for him to conclude that “mass shootings” are on the upswing: “Nearly 700 mass shootings occurred in 2021, up from 610 in 2020 and just 417 in 2019.” Except that in 2019 there were only 30 mass shootings, according to the FBI. And in 2020, instead of 610 such incidents, the FBI reported only 20, a 50-percent decline over 2019!

    AWR Hawkins, the Second Amendment writer for Breitbart, explained why: “The GVR standard [when counting mass shootings] is a much lower threshold for qualifying incidents as ‘mass shootings’ than has traditionally been used. In fact, it allows incidents in which there were no fatalities to be counted.… It also allows gang incidents, drive-by shootings, and other common street crimes to be counted as ‘mass shootings.’”

    Investigative journalist Lee Williams, writing for Armed American News, was much more explicit: According to their new report titled: “Active Shooter Incidents in the United States in 2020,” the FBI defines active shootings as:

    Shootings in public places
    Shootings occurring at more than one location
    Shootings where the shooter’s actions were not the result of another criminal act
    Shootings resulting in a mass killing
    Shootings indicating apparent spontaneity by the shooter
    Shootings where the shooter appeared to methodically search for potential victims
    Shootings that appeared focused on injury to people, not buildings or objects
    Shootings were excluded from the FBI’s list if they were the result of:
    Self-defense
    Gang violence
    Drug violence
    Contained residential or domestic disputes
    Controlled barricade/hostage situations
    Crossfire as a byproduct of another ongoing criminal act
    An action that appeared not to have put other people in peril

    Williams noted, “By comparison, the Gun Violence Archive excludes nothing, even if the shooting is gang or drug related — the two main causes of most violence in the country today.” Why do mainstream journalists turn so readily to GVA for data on mass shootings? Wrote Wiliams, “Anytime four or more people are killed or even slightly wounded with a firearm, it’s labeled a mass shooting, and politicians, gun control advocates and the mainstream media treat their reports as if they’re gospel.”

    GVA includes everything, and lets those writers seeking to promote their anti-gun, anti-Second Amendment agenda decide for themselves how they will use the data. The GVA website records police shooting injuries and deaths, mass shootings, individual gun related incidents, suicides, injuries, teen, child, and adult related injuries and deaths.

    Another writer who fell into the GVA data trap is Mother Jones Editor Mark Follman. In 2015 he used their data to claim that there were 355 “mass shootings” that year, but then discovered the mistake, and corrected it: ‘At Mother Jones, where I work as an editor, we have compiled an in-depth open-source database covering more than three decades of public mass shootings. By our measure, there have been four “mass shootings” this year, including the one in San Bernardino, and [just] 73 such attacks since 1982.’

    We are persuaded that Newsmax writer Eric Mack made an honest mistake. We are not persuaded that mainstream media writers are as innocent of misusing GVA data.”

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  36. I am adding a short daily prayer to the board. I would invite each of you, if you wish, to also add one or maybe two of your own liking. I do not want to stifle anyone but please limit yourself to one or two religious postings. here’s one I found that I liked.

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