Shickshinny PA
2011

Glass ornament manufacturing originated in Germany, with the hub located in the town of Lauscha. In the early 1800s Lauschan glassmakers blew kugels — a German word meaning sphere — to sell as window decorations, which soon caught on as tree ornaments.

https://www.byerschoice.com/christmas-traditions/blown-glass-ornaments

Soon this unique holiday decoration spread across Germany and all the glassblowers in Lauscha began producing blown glass ornaments to keep up with the demand. By the mid to late 1800s, entrepreneurs were blowing glass Christmas ornaments all over Germany not only for domestic use, but for export into the United States as well.

By the time the Christmas ornaments actually made their way to the United States, they were no longer just tiny glass balls. The Christmas ornaments now consisted of all sorts of glass pieces such as fruits and nuts, hearts and stars, and dozens of other shapes that had been molded and colored in an endless prism of hues and forms. The inside of the ornaments were made to look silvery, at first using mercury or lead, then later using a special compound of silver nitrate and sugar water.

In the 1880s it was the American dime-store magnate, F. W. Woolworth, who discovered Lauscha’s glassworks during a visit to Germany. Despite his initial reluctance to stock the glass ornaments, he later made a fortune by importing the German glass ornaments to the U.S. By 1890, Woolworth’s was selling millions of dollars of ornaments at nickel and dime prices.