Sklárna v Harrachově Glass factory

The glassworks at Nový Svět in Harrachov is the oldest continuously operating glassworks in the world. Glass has been produced here without interruption since seventeen twelve. Since nineteen ninety-one it has been a cultural monument, and its cutting workshop with machinery and sample collection has held the status of a national cultural monument since twenty fourteen.

The founder and first director of the glassworks was Elias Müller. His son Hans Josef Müller sold it in seventeen sixty-four to Count Ernst Guido Harrach, and the glassworks became part of the Harrachov estate. The Harrach family had actually been managing this area for a long time before that. They acquired the Krkonošské panství Branná in sixteen thirty-two.

The glassworks products gradually became famous throughout Europe. Already in the second half of the eighteenth century, the glassworks had warehouses in Vienna, Izmir, Istanbul and elsewhere. Its reputation was enhanced by visits from royal families. Archduke Joseph and Archduke Rainer came here, in eighteen twenty Crown Prince Ferdinand, the later Emperor Ferdinand First the Benevolent, and in eighteen forty King Frederick August the Second of Saxony. By the end of the nineteenth century, around four hundred people worked here. In eighteen ninety-five a large cutting workshop was built with electric lighting, powered by a water turbine.

The glassworks caught fire three times, in eighteen twenty-seven, eighteen sixty-one and nineteen forty-six, and each time it was restored. The Harrach family owned it until the Second World War. At that time Count Jan Harrach was forced under pressure from Nazi authorities to sell it. In nineteen forty-three it was purchased by Rudolf Endler, the director at that time. After the war the glassworks was nationalized.

The most difficult moment came in January nineteen forty-six. A fire destroyed the warehouse, the engraving workshop, the painting studio and offices, and the roof of the old furnace hall collapsed. There were considerations about shutting down operations, but the local workers stood up for its preservation. After the intervention of the chairman of the Czechoslovak government, construction of a new factory began that same summer.

From nineteen forty-eight the glassworks belonged to Železnobrodské sklo, from nineteen fifty-eight to Borské sklo, from which Crystalex Nový Bor later emerged. For the two hundred and fiftieth anniversary of its first mention, it received the Order of Labor in nineteen sixty-two. A major reconstruction in nineteen seventy-one brought an expansion of the furnace hall, two new furnaces and a new chimney. Coal gas produced directly in the glassworks then replaced gas supplied from a distance.

In nineteen ninety-three the glassworks was privatized. Its owner became František Novosad from Nový Bor, originally a trained glassmaker.