Credited to Austria. Artsy notes that the early history is unclear and that the object traces back to Europe near the end of the 19th century, and Wikipedia cites an earlier description of glass paperweights containing white powder that fell like a snowstorm. Perzy is widely considered the inventor and held the first patent.
How it began
Erwin Perzy, a surgical instruments mechanic in Vienna, was trying in 1900 to make a brighter light source for surgeons. He borrowed a shoemakers' trick of placing a water-filled glass globe in front of a light and added reflective particles to the water. The light did not improve, but when he poured in semolina the drifting white flakes reminded him of snowfall. He patented the Schneekugel and built his first globe around a model of the basilica of Mariazell.
How it works
A small figure or scene stands inside a glass globe filled with water and sealed to a base. Fine white particles in the water are stirred by shaking and settle slowly. Perzy first used semolina. His son later changed the material, and the recipe for the snow is a secret of the family firm. The firm's globes are hand painted and assembled by hand.
How it spread
Production in Vienna began in 1905, and Perzy and his brother Ludwig opened a shop. The globes, often with small pewter church figures, became popular with well-off Austrians, and in 1908 Emperor Franz Joseph I honored Perzy for the item. A snow globe appears in the opening of the 1941 film Citizen Kane. In the 1950s globes also became available in plastic.
Where it stands today
The firm, Original Vienna Snow Globes, was still run by the Perzy family in 2013, when the BBC reported that it had 30 employees and made about 200,000 globes a year in 350 standard designs plus custom orders. The factory doubles as a museum. The company faces cheaper rivals from the Far East.
