Buying vintage Christmas baubles at The Christmas Shop
A vintage Christmas bauble is a glass ball with a reflector: a silvered indent blown into the glass that catches the light from your tree lights and throws it back into the branches. Collectors often call them indent baubles. The result is a deep, warm shine that a smooth bauble simply cannot produce.
Every vintage bauble on this page comes from the Inge Glas Manufaktor workshop in Bavaria. Each one is mouth-blown, silvered on the inside and hand-painted, in sizes of 6, 8 and 10 centimetres. The Christmas Shop is the largest stockist of Inge Glas Manufaktor in the Benelux, so you see the full colour range side by side rather than a handful of odd colours. If you are after something different, have a look at our ordinary glass Christmas baubles as well.
Retro Christmas baubles with a reflector
A reflector only does its job when light falls on it. Hang these retro Christmas baubles close to a bulb, or slightly deeper in the tree where they pick up the Christmas lights from several directions. Alongside the round baubles there are glass icicles with the same mirrored indent: long and tapered, holding the light in a narrow streak. A handful is often enough, because each reflector passes the light on to the next one.
Mouth-blown Christmas baubles from Germany
German Christmas baubles owe their reputation to a glassblowing craft passed down through the same families for generations. At Inge Glas Manufaktor every ornament is blown, silvered and painted by hand in the workshop itself. A final inspection follows, and only the pieces that pass it receive the little star crown, the mark that tells you the ornament really was made by hand in Germany. Small differences between two baubles of the same colour come with the territory, and that is exactly what separates craft from factory work.
Nostalgic Christmas decorations in classic colours
Red, silver and gold form the heart of this nostalgic collection, with soft pink, deep pink, green, blue, orange and yellow alongside them. To capture the mood of an older Christmas, pick one or two colours and repeat them throughout the tree: that restraint is what gave those trees their calm. Prefer more colour? The reflector baubles sit happily next to handmade Christmas ornaments or the cooler tones of Delft Blue baubles.
See the vintage baubles in our Delft shop
In our shop in the centre of Delft the reflector baubles hang in the tree, so you can see the mirrored effect for yourself before choosing. That helps, because a colour in a photograph is rarely the colour you get under a bulb. Our staff are happy to talk sizes and combinations through with you, and you can collect an online order in the shop if that suits you better.
