Sparkling with colorful glitter, the small glassware shop in the Czech mountains lights up a grim, foggy day, as Christmas shoppers stream in to the constant chime of the doorbell.
They come to buy blown-glass beaded decorations including stars, angels, snowmen, Santa Clauses or cribs made by a small company in Ponikla, a village in the northern Czech Republic.
The “handmade production of Christmas tree decorations from blown glass beads” earned a place on the UNESCO list of intangible cultural heritage last year.
The practice has survived until today only in Ponikla, whose local tradition has roots in a 19th-century love affair.
“A certain