Four major companies in America continued to produce snow globes of varying quality and subject including souvenirs, but also holiday globes and novelty gifts. It was a similar landscape in Europe, with a few manufacturers dominating the snow globe scene. By the 1980s, snow globes were still a staple of the gift industry, but they’d also become the epitome of kitsch—probably because everyone and everything from Disney’s Bambi to the Lone Ranger to Niagara Falls and the White House could be put under glass and forced to endure frequent and bewildering snowstorms. But what does the market look like today? Oddly enough, snow globes remain big business. There is a sizable collector’s market for both antique and novelty domes. And Erwin Perzy III’s company is still healthy. The Vienna shop produces upwards of 200,000 snow globes a year, and that’s just a small part of the market. It’s perhaps a mark of how familiar a form a snow globe is, and what innocent—almost saccharine—kitsch they’re meant to be that they can be so gleefully perverted, as this collection of weird, macabre, and wonderful snow globes demonstrates.
Etsy seller TheTwistedTiara managed to combine the classic beauty and grace you find in ordinary snow globes with a ghost story to create a ballerina dancing near a grave while holding her own bloody head in her hand. By far the most delightfully gory snow globe in existence is this wonderful Halloween promotional product that shows Michael Myers attacking a teenage girl in a swirl of floating blood-colored sprinkles. If you really want a snow globe that will get people talking, this is it. Extra info on custom snowglobes.
To become a wide spread global gift, globes needed to be manufactured more efficiently. In 1927, an American, Joseph Garaja pioneered production improvements filling snow globes underwater. They went from an expensive individually crafted object to a cheaply made mass-produced item. Mass popularity grew in the 1940’s with the increased use of plastic and the development of the tourist industry. For those who could afford to travel with their families, souvenirs were in high demand. In response to this new market, the snow globe became lighter in weight, dome-shaped on top of an opaque colorful base. By the 1950’s every city and roadside attraction had its own snowglobe souvenir.
The origins of Christmas wreaths remain mostly a mystery. According to CBS, there are two theories about the origins of Christmas wreaths. One is that they are an “adaptation of the ceremonial wreaths of ancient Greece and Rome.” Another is that they developed from the “advent wreaths of mediaeval German Christians” who would adorn the wreaths with four candles to indicate the four weeks before Christmas. Even earlier, ancient Egyptians, the early Romans and the Vikings would display plants like green palm rushes, fir, spruce and evergreen branches that remained green all through wintertime as a way to ward off evil spirits and illness. Source: https://www.qstomize.com/collections/custom-snow-globe.