May 13

Today was the first real day of bead and button shopping....and we were all eagerly assembled outside the hotel waiting for the bus.

We left before the banks opened, we knew we would have to come back before going to the button showroom to buy buttons. But first... the button pressing hut, known as a druckhutte. This building was a re-modeled 150 year old building.

There we watched master pressers making buttons, pressing bead button one by one with a pair of pliers, then trimming the excess class off, then smoothing the edges.

 Rods of glass all lined up ready to use.

 Button pliers for pressing buttons

 The kiln with rods of glass

 Clement Riedel pressing buttons.

 Cutting the rough edges off the buttons

 polishing the edges smooth

There are only 3 master pressers left, all in their 60's. No younger apprentices coming up behind them. When they retire or die, it is over.

Next the showroom where we could watch the painters paint the buttons, and buy from the stock. All of us were madly buying gobs of buttons.

 The mad frenzy

 Gee, who's stash is this??

After lunch, we went to our first bead warehouse. There we could buy by the kilo. Some people did not want kilo's of the same bead, so much haggling and sharing between buyers occurred, sometimes with 3 people sharing one kilo between them.

After that, a quick stop at an  wonderful Antik shop for a look at the most fabulous beads and buttons and crystal vases available for purchase. It was such a small shop that all of us hardly fit in. We definitely made her month, with 15 crazed buyers wiping her out of most of her best items. We found many treasures to take back home.

Then back to the hotel to meet with the owner of the third button factory in Jablonec, who was going to give us a talk on the history of button production and slide show presentation, along with stock purchases from his inventory. The ladies ate everything up! He didn't bring enough.

We were starved, and ate really good Turkish food from a nearby kabob house while the presentation was given.

We all retired to our rooms to fondle our purchases and retire from the long day.

J-Me and Guy are the owners of Wild Things Beads, a small family run import business specializing in Czech glass beads and buttons and finding the unusual to bring to their warehouse. They also run working bead tours to Jablonec and Hong Kong. Their warehouse is located deep in the Sierra Nevada foothills of Northern California, and can be reached by phone at (530)743 1339 or on the web at www.wildthingsbeads.com. They are also open by appointment at their warehouse.