March 2025
Snow Globes and Semolina
Hello Tastorians!
As I write this, I'm getting ready to fly to Europe for 2 weeks of research and relaxation (probably heavier on the research). I'll be visiting, among other places, Budapest, Vienna, Bratislava, Rome and Florence and I can't wait to be inspired for future videos. If you want to follow my travels, Instagram, @tastinghistorywithmaxmiller, is the best place to go.
As I'll be in Vienna and as it may snow while I'm there, I thought I should share a story about the accidental invention of the snow globe as well as its connection to food.
The year was 1900, and Erwin Perzy, a Viennese mechanic of surgical instruments, was looking for a way to focus the light of the relatively new and rather dim electric light bulb so surgeons could better see where they were slicing. Inspired by shoemakers who placed water-filled globes in front of candles to produce a spotlight on their work, Perzy decided to do the same but with an electric light bulb.
Unfortunately, the contraption didn't produce the desired effect, so Perzy decided to fill the water in the globe with bits of material which would further reflect the light. After trying several different materials he finally added crushed bits of semolina, the flour used to make pasta. These bits slowly absorbed the water and gently fell over time reminding Perzy of snow. With this, he realized the invention was a failure at focusing light, but a success at mimicking snowfall so he placed the globe over a miniature of the Mariazell Basilica in Austria and proceeded to patent the snow globe. However, while Perzy may have been first to patent the snow globe, he is not its true inventor because the snow globe had been around for at least two decades prior.
In 1878, a delegate from the United States visited the Paris Universal Exposition and described seeing "Paper weights of hollow balls filled with water, containing a man with an umbrella. These balls also contain a white powder which, when the paper weight is turned upside down, falls in imitation of a snow storm." - Reports of the United States commissioners to the Paris universal exposition, 1878. These paper weights appeared again at the 1889 Paris Universal Exposition; the exposition which featured the newly built Eiffel Tower. So it is only fitting that they sold souvenirs in the form of Eiffel Tower-filled snow globes. One of these snow globes still exists and is on exhibition at the Bergstrom-Mahler Museum of Glass in Neenah, Wisconsin.
But even though Erwin Perzy didn't actually invent the snow globe, his version is what became popular and was sold in droves via his company, Original Vienna Snow Globes. The company is still around today, headed by Perzy's grandon, Erwin Perzy III. If I have time while I'm in Vienna, I may have to seek out this establishment and purchase a snow globe of my own.
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