The branch of the Karkonosze Museum in Szklarska Poręba was opened in 1995. It is located in a stylish house, which from 1890 belonged to the brothers Carl and Gerhart Hauptmann. The charisma of those outstanding writers caused an active colony of artists to gather around their house, which after 1922 took the formal shape of the Saint Luke’s Society of Artists.

The permanent museum exhibition outlines both the characters of the villa owners and the issues of the artistic life of the town in the pre- and post-war times. It also includes a presentation of glass products that used to be made in Szklarska Poręba. Apart from the extraction of precious stones and ores, the village’s history was from the very start connected with glass manufacturing. The first glassworks, the oldest in the Sudety Mountains, was established here in the mid-14th century The development of this branch of craft in the valley of the Czech Struga was favoured by the abundance of necessary raw materials: quartz and beech wood. Their massive exploitation resulted in successive moving of the glassworks to still higher parts of the mountains. It was more profitable than transporting the raw materials and influenced the creation of a “roaming” type of workshop. Medieval plants made the so-called forest glass (vitrium silvestre) or mountain glass (vitrium montanum). It was not very transparent, which was caused by ash impurities and numerous air bubbles, and often had a greenish colour (hence the name: “green glass”).

The rapidly growing popularity of Szklarska Poręba glass was an incentive for the Schaffgotsch family – the owners of this area – to increase the number of factories. In 1575, the first modern works was established in the Czech Struga valley, run by Hans Friedrich Bedřich, in 1617 – the factory in Biała Dolina, founded by Wolfgang Preussler, and in 1754 – the “Karstal” works in Orlem. In the early 19th century, there were 2 glassworks and 26 grinding shops in the settlement, and most of the local citizens were employed in glass production.

In 1841, the largest and most famous factory in the history of the city, the “Józefina” glassworks, was started (it went on until the end of World War II, and after the war it resumed production under the name of the “Julia” glassworks). It attained a global reputation thanks to a whole range of exclusive crystal glass products. Made of mass-dyed glass – ruby, alabaster, cobalt – they were richly decorated with grinding and engraving in accordance with the current artistic trends. Their fame was consolidated by the brand’s participation in global glass industry exhibitions in London, Paris and Vienna.