The American Lady(115)
Pride shone in his eyes. “This technique’s called pennelate, and the glass has to be hot for this as well. We make these delicate streaks by drawing a rod of colored glass over the surface very gently.” Richard’s face darkened suddenly. “I’m happy enough with what I can do with hot glass now. But I just can’t make any headway with the cold-work techniques. It’s not just that I don’t have the right tools. Täuber tells me that etching is the next big thing and that I have to find someone who knows his way around chemistry. He said he’d help me there—in fact he’s already written to a gallery owner he knows in Venice. We’ll see what comes of that . . .”
Wanda nodded. This man Täuber seemed to be serious about Richard’s future. She picked up the gleaming golden glass once more. “When I think of Heimer’s glasses and the leaping deer he puts on everything . . .”
“Don’t underestimate your father’s handiwork! I may be the only one in the village who knows that gold-leaf technique, but I’ve already found some of our own techniques in the Venetian glasses Gotthilf Täuber has shown me. Cameo work, threadwork, cut glass—we’ve been doing all that for centuries. Murano glass is all very beautiful, but most of it is done in some kind of neo-this or neo-that technique. It’s an old hat with a new ribbon, so to speak. It took me a while to realize that, but it convinced me that you can make something very special, something unique, by mixing old and new.” Richard’s eyes gleamed. “And I’m also convinced that a fellow can make money that way.”
Wanda had to laugh at his enthusiasm. “Then at least one of us has something to believe in!” she said dryly, then kissed him passionately on the lips.
Although it was already after eight o’clock by the time Wanda finally said a fond good-bye to Richard, she could see the gas flames still flickering in the Steinmann-Maienbaum workshop as she approached. Indeed, that morning Johanna had announced there would be a great deal to do that day. Wanda was thankful that the house was so quiet as it gave her a chance to think. All the same the first thing she did was look in the kitchen to see whether she could lend a hand there. When she saw that there was a pot of soup simmering away on the stove and that the bread had already been sliced, she sat down at the kitchen table and opened the drawer. She took out the notepad that Johanna always used for her various lists, then, with a smile on her face, she picked up a pencil and began to write:
Business Plan for the Heimer Workshop
She looked at the title and nodded. That was the way to do it! The next few sentences almost seemed to write themselves.
1. What can we do to get more commissions?
Find out what the wholesalers in Sonneberg are after, as Marie suggested in letter. Visit to Sonneberg urgently needed!
Perhaps find new clients in other nearby towns? For example Coburg, Meiningen, Suhl, Bayreuth, and Kulmbach? Discuss idea with Richard.
List techniques Father knows. Sit down with him and talk about whether he can make something new from old skills the way Richard has.
With every item she added to the list, Wanda’s confidence grew. “Somehow I thought that you would be a bit more . . . organized about the whole thing”—Richard’s rebuke had somehow given her new energy. She may not have trained as a bookkeeper or gone to secretarial college or learned any of the other skills needed in the business world, but she had grown up in a business household. She had ingested business thinking with her mother’s milk, so to speak. She only needed to remember that day when Pandora had sat in the courtyard of her tenement block surrounded by all her worldly goods—hadn’t she come up with a plan on the spot? She had smoothed things over with Pandora’s surly landlord and arranged a dance performance in her mother’s house. You can do anything you want in this world!—her own words came back to her.
Everything was suddenly clear as day: she would not be able to fix this mess on her own. She needed people on her side. Her pencil flew across the coarse paper.
2. Who can help me get all this done?
What can Michel do? Write lists and letters? I have to talk to him right away.
What can Eva do? How can I win her over so that she helps too?
I have to try to get Grandfather on my side here.
The next thought struck her like a bolt of lightning. She wrote:
Richard! Is there any way he and Father could work together?
Richard was always complaining about not having enough equipment in his workshop after all—if he joined forces with her father, he could use all the Heimer family tools. Wanda was practically overjoyed at the thought. This was the argument she could use to lure Thomas Heimer in. Why had she never thought of it before? Her father would no longer be the only glassblower in the house, and there would be two of them to tackle every task. The wholesalers would certainly see greater production capacity as an advantage, and they might place more orders for that reason alone. New scenes formed in her mind’s eye, so wonderful, so promising that she was almost a little scared. Richard and Thomas blowing glass, Eva and Michel packing the wares, herself with a notepad in hand making sure every order went to the right client—the Heimer workshop bustling with life just as it had back in the day, just as Marie had described. Hope—more than hope, confidence—flared up in Wanda like the flame of a gas lamp.