A half measure, but with full effect!

What is a "seppl" hat without a "dirndl" dress in Bavaria? Just one half of the whole, for sure! Ubiquitous, yet new, and armed with a good deal of wit, the female consumer group at the start of the 20th century wanted perfume flacons. Pocket flacons such as "Seppel and his dirndl“ were the in thing, and not just in Bavaria.

To give flacons a leak-proof screwthread for women's handbags and cover growing demand at the same time, the three glassworks in Tettau Corner—Alexanderhütte, Heinz-Glas and Hammerschmidt—started introducing semi-automatic technology in the 1920s. As you can see in the following video, this made the work more efficient and the manual mouth blowing technique was replaced by the use of over 2 bars of compressed air.

The four glassmakers were needed to operate the semi-automatic machine (starter, pre-blower, blower and inserter), who worked hand-in-hand in harmony. With this method, one team could produce between 4,000 and 8,000 flacons every shift. Due to the tough physical demands, such as the high levels of noise and heat, semi-automatic production remained a male-only profession.

Glassmakers Günther Neubauer and Willi Stärker from Ebersdorf, Kronach, Upper Franconia, got to see the good old days of semi-automatic production close-up in Kleintettau. You can hear about their experiences through the following audio contributions.

The labor shortage in the war years led to container glass production gradually moving towards full automation. But before fully automated production moved into Tettau Corner at the start of the 1970s, sales in semi-automatic products, such as the figure-decorated pocket flacons, flourished.

This was also the case in the still-young German Democratic Republic (East Germany), as the following catalog pages from 1955 with pocket flacons from the Thuringian company VEB Glaswerk Piesau demonstrates.

To bring the character figures out more, glassmaker families in the villages often did some of the painting at home. The handcraft's uniqueness and hint of charm would fall victim to the future mechanization and rationalization of new decoration methods.

If you want to find out more about the European Flacon Museum in Kleintettau, take a look at the next section. It will give you a brief overview of the home of the glass flacon.