Almost everything we sell is made in southern Poland, in workshops small enough that the same person often shapes a piece and then paints it.
A glass ornament starts as a clear glass tube. A glassblower heats it and blows it into shape by breath, one piece at a time — sometimes into a mould for a figure like a Santa or an angel, sometimes freehand. The inside is then coated with silver, which is what makes the glass hold light instead of swallowing it.
After that it is painted, and this is the slow part. Colour goes on in layers. Faces, snow and folk patterns are added with a fine brush. Glitter is applied while the paint is still wet. A single ornament can pass through several pairs of hands before it is finished.
None of this produces identical objects. Paint thickness varies, glitter falls differently, and hand-blown glass is never exactly the same thickness twice. If you buy two of the same design, you will be able to tell them apart.
The napkins are made differently — printed on three-ply tissue, twenty to a pack — but they come from the same part of the world and the same habit of making ordinary things worth looking at.