Glass from Podpoľanie's glassworks

Products from Podpoľanie's glassworks form part of the exhibition on Detva and the Vígľaš estate. They add a skilled craft to the picture of a region associated with agriculture, sheep farming and woodworking. A glassworks operated in Detvianska Huta in the second half of the eighteenth century, using local quartz deposits.

In the early nineteenth century, production moved to Hriňová. The glassworks belonged to the Vígľaš estate, which leased them to master glassmakers until production declined in the early twentieth century. Regional output included window glass, hollowware, pressed glass and cut crystal. These represent different kinds of production, from material used in buildings to vessels formed and finished by glassworkers.

The museum's selection accompanies written documents, photographs and archaeological finds through which the exhibition presents the history of the estate and settlement. Here, glass is a material record of the local economy: it was made in workshops owned by landowners but operated by the skilled craftspeople who leased them.