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Snow globes capture slices of fantasy and protect them under glass from harsh, outside realities. They’ve become popular kitschy souvenirs, but once they were high-end, luxury items for wealthy homes. Swati Pandey wrote a history of these quaint decorations. It all started in Vienna:
Around the turn of the century, Erwin Perzy, a Viennese medical instrument maker, was trying to make a brighter operating room bulb by filling a globe with water and white grit and shining light through it. It didn’t work, except to remind Perzy of snow. At the request of a souvenir-maker friend, he put the Basilica of the Birth of the Virgin Mary below a glass globe, which, when shaken, resembled a snowstorm. Perzy patented the “Glass Globe with Snow Effect” in 1900, launched a business and, by 1908, won an award from the Austrian emperor, Franz Josef I. His company still churns out domes today.
Link -via Glenn Reynolds | Photo: Flickr user Keith Williamson
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Carl of theWAREHOUSE blog sent us his latest creation: he gutted a ho-hum "inspirational gift" snowglobe and made it awesome by placing a little Tony Montana (Al Pacino) of Scarface sitting on his desk piled high with cocaine (cocaine = snow, get it?): Link – Thanks Carl!
