The Original Vienna Snow Globe Factory produces roughly 300,000 snow globes per year.
Joe Klamar/AFP via Getty Images
In the opening scene of the 1941 mystery Citizen Kane, the eponymous protagonist, played by Orson Welles, clenches a snow globe in his hand as he utters his last word: “rosebud.” The glass-encased spherical diorama of a snowy scene was a mere novelty at the time, but the film, in part, gave rise to its popularity.
Now, more than 80 years later, it’s hard to imagine the Christmas season without snow globes. A symbol of childhood nostalgia, the Austrian innovation has become beloved around the world.
In September 2024, I toured the Original Viennese Snow Globe Factory and Museum in Vienna’s 17th district. Erwin Perzy III, spokesperson of the multigenerational family business, led me through the story of how his grandfather, Erwin Perzy I, invented the snow globe.
“He invented this by mistake, because he wanted to make something different,” he told me. “The improvement of the electric light bulb was his [intention].”
Snow globes manufactured in the workshop of the Original Vienna Snow Globe Factory are seen on display at the Christmas market by Vienna’s city hall.
Joe Klamar/AFP via Getty Images
The accidental invention of the snow globe
It was 1900 when Erwin Perzy I, a tradesman who built and repaired surgical instruments for local physicians in Vienna, was tasked with creating an inexpensive solution to amplify light in hospital operating rooms. Perzy, who always had a knack for experimenting in his workshop, found inspiration for his assignment in a tool used by local shoemakers: a glass globe filled with water to act as a magnifying glass. He positioned an Edison light bulb near a water-filled glass globe, and he added different reflective materials to the liquid that might help increase the illumination—including white particles that floated around before sinking like snow.
Little did he know at the time that this makeshift contraption would inadvertently become the basis for a tabletop ornament that would take the world by storm.
But Perzy was, indeed, a tinkerer. He had a friend who sold souvenirs to pilgrims at the Mariazell Basilica, a local religious site south of Vienna, for whom he made trinkets; he molded little pewter models of the church to be sold alongside candles and crosses. One day, an idea struck: to combine two of his handiworks together, by putting the miniature pewter church inside the wooden base of the glass globe filled with water and white wax particles—effectively creating the first snow globe. Perzy knew he had something special on his hands—not to mention marketable—and applied for a patent for “glass ball with snow effect.” By the end of that year, he formed a company with his brother Josef, and they opened a small workshop in the back of his house on Schumanngasse in Vienna’s residential 17th district.
“Collectors agree that the first snow globe patent was issued to the Viennese Erwin Perzy,” reports Anne Hilker in her thesis, “A Biography of the American Snow Globe: From Memory to Mass Production, From Souvenir to Sign,” filed in the Smithsonian Libraries and Archives. But her report also cites appearances of snow globes that, while short-lived, predate Perzy’s patent. “The earliest snow globe for which both specific surviving contents and date can be established is that containing a miniature of the Eiffel Tower from the Paris [Exposition] of 1889.”
Sharing his invention with the world
With the popularity of his miniature church model in a snow globe, it was no surprise that Perzy started putting other models into glass spheres and selling them in markets around the city. By 1908, he had become known by many Austrians, including Emperor Franz Joseph, who praised Perzy for his ingenuity and gave him a special award as an Austrian toymaker. Perzy’s snow globe spread across Europe, and by the 1920s, the inventor even began exporting some stock to India.
Employees at the Original Vienna Snow Globe Factory assemble and paint different snow globes.
Joe Klamar/AFP via Getty Images
However, its trendiness waned after World War I. With the subsequent economic depression, snow globes were not a necessary purchase, and sales rapidly went into decline. The situation did not improve during World War II. However, when the war ended and soldiers returned home, starting families and creating the baby boom of the late 1940s and ’50s, a subsequent snow globe boom took hold.
“My grandfather got very rich because he sold snow globes like crazy,” Erwin Perzy III explained to me on the tour.
Enter Erwin Perzy II, a motorbike and typewriter mechanic, who also worked with his father in the little workshop that was once abuzz with snow globe production. Perzy II gradually took over the family business over the 1940s and carried his father’s snow globes into a new era.
“My father’s idea was changing the pilgrim souvenir to a Christmas item,” Perzy III told me. “He made a Christmas tree.” Perzy II took three new models of snow globes—a Christmas tree, a snowman and Santa Claus—to the international toy fair in Nuremberg, Germany, in 1955.
“They bought our snow globes like it was something to eat!” Perzy III gushed as he retold his father’s success story. “We supplied all the big stores, like Macy’s, Neiman Marcus, Saks Fifth Avenue, Bergdorf Goodman—all these big chains.”
An employee paints the model inside a snow globe.
Joe Klamar/AFP via Getty Images
That year, Perzy II moved operations to an old carriage house down the street, with more rooms to expand production. He scaled operations and created more models to expand the catalog’s variety. His strategies worked: Sales and distribution, particularly through American department stores, only increased over time. Ultimately, the United States became the Perzys’ biggest market, having the largest number of collectors. Roughly 10,000 shops sold their snow globes, mostly across Florida, New York and California.
Snow globes go global
Perzy III, a toolmaker by trade, continued the family’s snow globe dynasty—still in the old carriage house on Schumanngasse. In the 1970s, he aided in growing the company into a global phenomenon, especially after living for a few years in Japan, where snow globes were reminiscent of kamakura, nostalgic dome-shaped igloos used as celebratory gathering shelters in snowy regions.
“After three years, I met a very good customer—Mitsubishi—and they placed their first order, [which] was 100,000 snow globes,” he told me. It was this moment that made his family’s product popular across Japan.
In 1987, he had taken over the company back in Vienna, where he created new models with plastic molds of his own designs and perfected the fake snow within the glass sphere. By this time, his grandfather’s original patent had lapsed, leaving the door open for other manufacturers, so the company sought to stand out in the snow globe industry as the original. While the exact faux snow formula is a family secret, it’s a proprietary blend of wax and plastic that gives the Original Viennese Snow Globe its signature longer-lasting snow-falling effect, amid a growing number of competitors with particles that sometimes clump or sink more quickly.
In his efforts to propel the brand into the 21st century, Perzy III became the frontman for Original Viennese Snow Globes, with local Austrian press calling him “Snow Globe King Perzy III.” His own popularity has gone international.
“When I go to Japan, I feel like a movie star,” he told me. “People are standing in line to get a picture with me.”
A snow globe made for former president Barack Obama is on display at the museum.
Joe Klamar/AFP via Getty Images
During his “reign,” Original Viennese Snow Globes have appeared in the Hollywood films Edward Scissorhands, Home Alone and True Lies. Corporate clients like McDonald’s have made custom orders for limited-edition snow globe runs. And Perzy III has even been commissioned to craft snow globes for American Presidents Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama—duplicates are on display in the factory’s on-site museum.
The company’s reputation only flourished from there; for many, nothing but an Original Viennese Snow Globe will do. That’s “because of our flexibility regarding design, quantity, delivery date, our more than 120 years’ experience, and detailed craftsmanship,” added Sabine Perzy II, Erwin Perzy III’s daughter. “And our perfect snow, of course.”
The snow globe future is female
The Perzys’ snow globe empire survived two world wars, so it was no surprise it also survived the Covid-19 pandemic—thanks to the efforts of Sabine, who fulfilled a childhood dream when she took over the family business in July 2020.
“In 2020, I invented the snow globe with the toilet paper roll inside, which brought us through the pandemic,” she told me. The kitschy but ingenious snow globe with a model of a roll of toilet paper inside is on display in the museum.
Post-pandemic, Perzy snow globes continue to be crafted at the old carriage house production facility, housing 11 dedicated on-site employees, supported by about four dozen workers manually assembling snow globes at home. Together, they produce roughly 300,000 snow globes per year. While Sabine is owner of the company and in charge of operations, her father, Perzy III, continues to innovate new molds for the catalog and custom orders—now with a computer and a 3D printer.
“I never worked harder than when she became my boss,” he joked.
The Original Viennese Snow Globe company is thriving, and the future is as bright as it is lucrative. “Since 2021, we have increased our profit by 100,000 euros every year,” Sabine reported.
However, in a family business that’s endured for over a century, the past occasionally makes a resurgence. “Some people are showing up and bringing very, very old snow globes from my grandfather,” said Perzy III.
When they ask for repairs, the Perzys do their best, because when it comes to snow globes, they want to be the best. As Sabine put it, “I believe it’s our passion and family history that make the Vienna snow globe so special.”
