During three days, from the 23rd. to the 25th of September 2004, the German Society of Glassblowers met in Lauscha.
Lauscha is a small city, located in the "Thüringer Forrest". The whole region was the centre of glass production in
the German Democratic Republic. After the "reunion" many things changed for the local people, but not the
tradition of glassblowing. It a unique area with unique people and a unique glass.

Lauscha is very well known to every glassblower in Germany for two reasons. The first is the "Lauscha-Glass", a
colourful soda glass with a co-efficient of expansion of 11-6 K, from which figurative glasswork is created.
"Lauscha-Glass" is also very famous today for bead making.
The second reason for Lauscha's fame is that almost every glass-eye producer originated from here. The
inventor of the glass eye, a Mr. Müller-Uri lived in Lauscha and his descendants are still running a business for glass eye
prosthesis in Lauscha and many other places.

Initially the symposium was supposed to be a small meeting. But the area's fame combined with the good advertising in
the VDG Journal and website brought together about one hundred and fifty members and friends to Lauscha. We
were very proud to welcome about fifty very young glassblowers, trainees and students from all over Germany
and Austria. We all had a great time.

For the first two days, Thursday and Friday, we had organised "workshops" in several locations in Lauscha. It is typical
for the town, that there are many small workshops, in almost every house. The main part of the workshop
programme took place in the "Farbglashütte Lauscha", the glass hut where rods and tubes are pulled by hand. There
are also large showrooms and a couple of lampworking tables. Everybody could either just watch or to try their
hand with working at a basic level using the extremely soft and long "Lauscha-Glass". There was the choice of
different teachers and techniques. For example Falk Baur who produces the most incredible bugs, spiders and
other insects out of coloured glass. Andreas Tresslet is specialist in hollow glasswork and montage techniques.
Jens Müller-Schmoß produces massive figurative glassworks. Jana Brinkmann was introducing the participants to
bead making. We had the opportunity to watch oven glassblowers of the glass hut in action, visit a glassblower creating
glass eyes or the glass museum of Lauscha anytime in-between demonstrations. For those interested, Micheal
Drews of the Glass Centre, Lauscha, allowed delegates to have, which for some, was their first experience of
handling a glassblowers pipe. There was action taking place throughout the whole of the programme. It was, despite the rain, a superb time.

The Guesthouse Gollo is "the" pub in Lauscha. As a glassblower you will never sit there alone for long. Even the
barkeeper is a glass artist, as are his two brothers. During a normal evening in the pub at least 80 percent of the guests in
some way work with glass. Thursday and Friday evenings saw our "informal" meetings held there. It must have
been two nights of intense work for the staff of the Gollo, but two nights of full pleasure for us. I can't remember a
VDG meeting where we had such a range of experiences and such a lot of fun. I know that every time
glassblowers meet it is such a lot of pleasure and loads of fun, but I guess because of the special atmosphere of Lauscha
and the amazing impression of the day, that everybody was high even before the first beer.

Saturday morning saw the actual VDG meeting officially commence and even though many delegates were almost
exhausted by that time, the spirit of Lauscha kept us going.

After my welcome speech we divided into two groups for our visiting tours.
One group explored "Lauscha Fibre International", where you could see the production of various glass fibres and
pellets. The fibres are used for filtration and insulation industries. It was great to watch how liquid glass transforms in the
spinning process to a soft and fluffy mattress. Well, that's what I heard! because I joined the second group to see
the "Glaswerk Ernstthal" and so can give a more detailed report about that. Ernstthal is a little village above the
Lauscha valley. It is dominated by a huge big green box, the glass factory. It is a great story to hear of what
happened following the German reunion. The company was founded in 1923 and by 1990 it had almost disappeared, but
they had a very skilled and acknowledged glassworkforce. After many years of large investments of energy and
by prevailing upon a couple of obstacles, it is now one of the most modern plants for container glass productions.
They specialise in high quality bottles of complicate shapes. The new and bigger glass-melting tub has a day
capacity of 120 tons. The glass they melt is extreme clear and "white" and expensive. But clear distillates such as vodka
or gin just look better in clear bottles.
I have been in a couple of container glass factories before and just love the atmosphere with the combination of
darkness, heat and enormous noise. But the production here was the most amazing I have ever seen. At one point
we stood between two IS - machines, who handled the same glass to work with. One produces little 2cl bottles for
liquor shots and the other one, two-litre vodka bottles with an eccentric neck. Cut-off glass drops constantly down
from the feeder in the moulds and in a seemingly total chaos way, everything is moving so fast, but well organised.
The most amazing thing for me was the possibility to get so close to the production, to the melting tub and to the
feeder. One position upon the IS - machines, we found ourselves right between the four feeders, just half a metre
away from the hot glass stream. At the end of each feeder we could see the separator working, the "rotate
cylinder" and "awl rod". You really couldn't get any closer, except wearing heat-protecting gear or get seriously burned.

The two groups met again in Lauscha where we held our AGM after a lunch break. During the AGM we discussed the
idea of an international symposium in 2007. I received the go ahead from members present to progress the
collaboration between the VDG, BSSG and colleagues in the Netherlands, to hold a t jointly organised International
symposium in The Netherlands. At the end of our AGM we nominated Reinhold Reeb as an honorary member. Previous
to my Chairmanship of the VDG, Reinhold was ten years as chairman of the VDG and all together
nineteen years as an active member of the Society.

The meeting in Lauscha ended on Saturday with the so-called "glass hut evening". We sat between the working melting
ovens from the "Farbglashütte" Lauscha, enjoying ourselves once again by savouring traditional food, music and
beer. We had a special guest, the Glass Princess of Lauscha, Claudia the First. She handed our present to Reinhold,
a glass sculpture in his effigy. That gave Reinhold the unique chance to kiss her Highness. Well, we don't know
what Reinhold enjoyed more, his present or the kiss!

Well, I hope I was able to give you in some small way an accurate report about the experiences that for me are so very
important at this event in Lauscha. It was very exhausting and many participants included myself suffered
afterwards, but it really was worth it. Whenever you visit this area, don't miss Lauscha! There's one final thing I wish to
strongly recommend. On the way back to Ulm, my trainee Jonas and I stopped in Coburg. The Veste Coburg has a
very good museum for historic art crafts. They have an excellent exhibition on historic glass plus a modern glass
museum about six kilometres away, and there are many more amazing things to see, such as wonderful rifles and pistols.

References:

http://www.vdg-ev.org/

http://www.farbglashuette.de/eng/index.html

http://www.lauschaer-glasaugen.de/

http://www.glasatelier-tresselt.de/

http://www.lfifiber.com/en/index.htm

http://www.kunstsammlungen-coburg.de/