The American Lady(90)

Now Wanda was truly speechless.



When they went into the drawing school where the museum was located a few minutes later, Wanda was still shaken. People thought she was a fortune hunter? There was no way she could let them think that about her; she had to set them right!

She frowned as she listened to Johannes explaining the contents of the display cases arranged in an old classroom in the school building.

Johannes noticed the look of disappointment on her face. “I know, it’s not much of a museum yet, but it’s a start. The older pieces were first put on display thirteen years ago, when Lauscha celebrated its three hundredth anniversary. My parents helped organize it. These days everybody likes the idea of having the past on display like this. Here, look at these, some of the first glasses ever made in Lauscha.” Johannes pointed to some beer and wine glasses made of light-green glass, painted with simple scenes of country life. Then he went past several cases full of Christmas decorations and stopped in front of a display with curious pipework and flasks.

“And this is the modern era! With only three hundred short years in between.” He grinned when he saw the confusion on Wanda’s face.

“What in the world are all those?”

“Technical glassware. There are quite a few glassblowers making laboratory equipment these days. It’s a good business to be in, since there are more and more chemical factories springing up and they all need equipment. Anybody who works in technical glass will always have customers. Not like those who still make housewares and ornaments.”

“Time was when the Heimer workshop was well-known for the quality of their wares and the range they could offer, but they’ve been in a bad way for a few years now.” That was what Marie had told her.

“Marie mentioned that a lot of glassblowers are having trouble finding buyers for their wares, but she never said that half of Lauscha has been hit by the crisis.”

“Aunt Marie!” Johannes laughed. “What does she know about life in the village?”

When he saw the question in Wanda’s eyes, he took a deep breath and explained.

“Marie used to spend her days sitting at her workbench or with her sketchpad somewhere; she didn’t get out and about much. She simply didn’t care to. Whether it was carnival time or the May dance or our solstice celebrations—Magnus often used to complain that he could never persuade her to come out and see people. Her idea of a fun day out was to go and see that old bookworm over in Sonneberg.”

“I don’t believe it!” Wanda exclaimed. “You should have seen her in New York. My mother had trouble keeping her at home any night of the week. She was always going off to a gallery or a poetry recital—Marie was like a butterfly, flitting from flower to flower.”

“Are you sure we’re talking about the same Marie?”

Wanda giggled but quickly became serious. “All the same I still don’t understand why the Lauscha glassblowers are going through such hard times. People need glass everywhere, don’t they, all over the world?”

“They do indeed, but Lauscha isn’t the only place that makes glass. Over ninety percent of the workforce in the Thuringian Forest region is in the glass business—at least that’s what the fellows with the slide rules say. So there’s an excess supply of goods and a labor surplus, and that affects us too, for good and ill. For instance if Mother isn’t happy with one of our pieceworkers because the woman cuts corners in the painting or doesn’t deliver the goods on time, she has no trouble finding someone else to take over. But if we can’t deliver on an order, the client will drop us so fast we won’t know what happened to us.”

“People don’t buy Christmas decorations all year round, though, do they?”

Johannes looked at her approvingly. “Quite right. Seasonal work is especially difficult, you see. And now that so many other suppliers have jumped on the bandwagon these past few years, prices have gone down rather than up. What helps our family is that we have good contacts abroad—thanks in no small part to your mother, who is always finding new clients for us.”

Mother, broadening the client base? Wanda raised her eyebrows.

“And then the boss is always finding new ways to lower our production costs. Oh yes, and don’t forget that we also make the prettiest baubles!”

“You’re not shy about saying so, are you?” Wanda laughed. But she realized that everything Johannes said was quite true—the family business seemed to be on firm footing. She enjoyed talking to her cousin about business. It made her feel very grown-up.

Johannes had something to say about every item on display, and he seemed to have an excellent head for figures. Lauscha had been founded in 1597. The price of firewood went up in 1748, and then from 1753 onward the master glassmakers were excused from their obligation to supply glasses to the duke’s court free of charge, although they had to pay more taxes instead. And so on and so forth. She found the way he explained everything most interesting, but all the same a dull sense of disappointment was creeping into the back of her mind. Lauscha was so different from how she had imagined it.