Handmade and world renowned

Germany is a modern high-tech and industrial country, but at the same time there are a multitude of tradition-rich factories where great value is attached to genuine handcraft and masterly skill. Here are three of Germany’s most prestigious big manufacturers.

Nomos Glashütte - the largest watch manufacturer in Germany

US writer Gary Shteyngart noted that a “monastic silence” prevailed when he visited the Nomos Glashütte workshop. He returned home full of inspiration: “At Nomos, the dignity of work is still celebrated,” he wrote in an article for the New Yorker, praising the manufacturing facility in the Saxon town of Glashütte as a site of creative production. It can take several years before a watch is completed.

Meissen - the oldest porcelain factory in Europe

Meissen porcelain requires precisely working moulders, embossers with a sense of artistic design, and even Schwerterer, or “sworders”. The last are what the specialized painters are called who have been applying by hand the cobalt blue trademark of two crossed swords since 1722 to cups, plates, bowls and much else. The porcelain manufactory was founded in Saxony in 1710. The variety of model forms used by the craftsmen and preserved to a large extent over the centuries is still unique worldwide. The factory's colour laboratory, which continues to produce new hues, is also fit for the future.

Glashütte Lamberts - the world market leader for mouth-blown plate glass

“It’s reminiscent of a dance: everyone has to know exactly where his colleague is standing”. Robert Christ from Glashütte Lamberts is talking about well-choreographed work performed near blazing heat. Many skilled manual processes are required before a glowing and soft vitreous mass can be turned into sheet glass that is in global demand. A few years ago, Glashütte Lamberts in Germany’s Upper Palatinate region made glass for the clock faces of London bell tower Big Ben; Lamberts’ glass has long been decorating Cologne Cathedral, the Rockefeller Center in New York and the underground station of the airport in the Chinese city of Shenzhen. There are only a few other glassworks that produce mouth-blown sheet glass. Unique to Lamberts, however, is the variety of over 5,000 different colours in which its glass is produced.