Shiny Brite Christmas Ornaments: Then and Now

Shiny Brite ornaments began in the WW II era. Americans loved the shine of glass ornaments hung on their Christmas trees, but most of those beautiful decorations came from Germany and Japan. In the late 1930s, war loomed on the horizon.

Since 1907, Max Eckardt had imported German decorated glass balls into the U.S. He remembered how World War I had brought the trade in ornaments to a standstill, and by 1937 he realized that his prosperous enterprise probably would be disrupted again. Like any good businessman, he made plans to deal with the difficulty.

Eckardt started to look for domestic suppliers. He visited the Corning Glass factory, since he knew they employed a number of European glassblowers who had emigrated to America. In 1937, Corning held exclusive patents to a "ribbon" glassblowing machine. The machine was making 2000 light bulbs per minute, and it was capable of making more. Eckardt realized immediately that the machine could be modified to produce glass Christmas ornaments.

By late 1938, the Corning company had started to experiment with ornament molds. In 1940, they made about 300,000 ornaments daily, selling them to other businesses for decoration. Their biggest customer was Shiny Brite, the business established by Max Eckhardt.

The first large number of domestically-made Christmas tree ornaments appeared in 1939. That year, the largest seller of imported glass decorations, Woolworth's, also realized that war was on the horizon. The company ordered 235,000 ornaments made by Corning, and marketed them successfully that Christmas.

Eckrdt went on making Shiny Brite ornaments all through World War II. When he couldn't get silver or lacquer in 1944 because of wartime shortages, he decorated the clear glass spheres with thin painted stripes in pastel colors. the shining metal caps used before the war were replaced by glued-on cardboard caps and folded cardboard hangers.

When the war ended, Shiny Brite became the biggest U.S. maker of glass ornaments. The bright colors were characteristic of the postwar years. These postwar decorations had metal caps stamped "Shiny Brite Made in US" and were packed in boxes labeled "American Made".

The line stopped making glass ornaments in 1962. These vintage Shiny Brite decorations are very popular with collectors. Today, families are thrilled with Christopher Radko's reintroduction of the line.

Radko bought the rights to the Shiny Brite name, and began producing accurate reproductions of the decorations in 2001. Even the cases look almost the same as the vintage boxes, except that the phrase 'Christopher Radko presents' has been added. Shiny Brite ornaments are now available again!