Soon the Bells Will Start

Are you singing "It's Beginning to Look A Lot Like Christmas"?

This past Saturday we visited our local kringwinkels (secondhand stores) to check out the Christmas decorations. I got a few gift tags, an ornament, and a little bag with Sinterklaas and Zwarte Piet (that's Santa Claus and his helper, Black Pete). Although I didn't purchase one, I estimated there were no less than 100 nativity sets at one kringwinkel. I am probably underestimating. Big, small, wooden, ceramic . . .

Then on Sunday morning we went to the Tongeren Antique Market to look around. It was freezing cold and had been raining (imagine that) and we got a late start so many of the vendors were packing up. There are only a few who have Christmas items, but the one we found was all we needed to find. She had hundreds of ornaments. We had such a good time looking through these ornaments (despite my numb hands) that I'd like to go back next week.

All the ornaments in this particular booth were mercury glass. I've never known much about these kind of ornaments except that they are pretty and usually old. Once the lady at this booth saw our interest, she began to tell us about her collection. She spoke Flemish, but she spoke it very slowly and clearly and I was amazed that we could both understand nearly every word she said. It was so nice.

She showed us a book with pictures and descriptions of the very ornaments she had and told us the story of the Ajeko (Ajeco) glass ornament. There is a wide variety of shapes from Santas to bells to fish and mushrooms. I'd never heard of it before, but I came home and googled it and learned only a little more.

Here's how the story goes . . .

The Jezelin family of glass blowers immigrated from what is now the Czech Republic to Belgium and manufactured various glass objects - mostly for laboratories. As the war prevented the import of German Christmas ornaments, Alfred Jezelin expanded the business to produce ornaments and registered a patent for the glass hook, dated 8/27/1943.

Mr. Jezelin moved to Luxembourg in 1952 and founded Verrerie - Glasfabrik Gremoglas for the production of Christmas ornaments. For reasons unknown, production stopped and it was moved in 1954 to Euskirchen, Germany and that's about all I know, but I'm sure there's more to this story.

Anyway, I've never been a big fan of antiques or of breakable Christmas ornaments. We've had a few break from time to time, so I quit buying them . . . until now. We did buy a couple of the Ajeko ornaments because they are unique and were apparently made in Belgium. They also weren't too outrageously priced at €12 each.

I also learned a little more about mercury glass . . . it is glass blown double walled then silvered between the layers and sealed. Although mercury was originally used for mirrors, ornaments, etc., it was never used in tableware.