Jablonec

A hillside town in northern Bohemia, and for centuries one of the great homes of Czech glass and beads.

Where it is

Jablonec nad Nisou sits in the Jizera Mountains, about an hour and a half from Prague. It is a proper town with a square, tram lines, cafés — and, if you know where to look, beads everywhere.

A short glass story

Glassmaking grew up in these mountains centuries ago, drawn by wood for the furnaces and good sand. By the 1700s and 1800s the area around Jablonec (once known as Gablonz) had become famous for beads, buttons and costume jewellery shipped all over the world.

Small family workshops and larger factories sat side by side. Pressed beads, cut beads, fire-polished glass, lamp-work, waxed pearls — many of the techniques bead lovers still seek out today were refined here.

Vintage Jablonec square with the town-hall clock tower

Old postcard of the market square in Jablonec

Cottage workshops

At its height this was a true cottage industry. Family workshops dotted the hills around Jablonec — by around 1900 there were nearly 600 factories and works in the area, and by the 1930s several thousand registered firms. Many were home-based makers, melting glass over a flame at a wooden bench.

Only a handful remain in original working order — still looking and running much as they did a century ago. On our tours we sometimes visit one of these last working cottage factories.

Visitors outside a traditional cottage glass factory with tall brick chimneys near Jablonec — Outside one of the last cottage factories still in original working condition — those tall chimneys give the furnaces away.

Craftswoman lampworking glass beads at a traditional workshop bench — Inside: lampwork at the bench — glass rods, metal moulds, and a flame that has been doing this job for generations.

Why bead people still come

The industry has changed, but the craft has not disappeared. You can still visit makers, poke through antique shops, walk into the Museum of Glass and Jewellery, and watch glass being pressed, cut and lamp-worked.

That is why we base our holidays here. It is not a theme park. It is a living bead town.

Old postcard of the villa quarter and church in Jablonec

The museum

The Museum of Glass and Jewellery is the best place to start if you want the story in one visit — how Czech bead and glass-making grew from the 18th century onward, and how Jablonec became a name bead people still recognise.

Vintage market day in the Jablonec square

Come and see it with us

We live near Prague and know the back streets, the workshops and the shops worth the dust on your fingers. Have a look at tour inspiration, or send a message and tell us what you want to see.

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