Glass Christmas tree decorations have been around since the middle of the 19th century. Century made mainly by home workers in Thuringia. According to legend, the idea of???? making colored glass balls for the Christmas tree came from a poor Lauscha glassblower who could not afford the expensive walnuts and apples in 1847. He is said to have blown up glass bottles into glass decorations for the Christmas tree. This story cannot be proven! The raw material had to be obtained from a glassworks and was certainly not free. A glassblower’s order book has been preserved, in which an order for six dozen “Christmas balls” in various sizes was recorded for the first time in 1848. So they weren’t made for your own tree. In the early days of production, glassblowers used a harmful alloy of tin and le.