About Henschke Jewellery

When you wear your beautiful, quirky, mesmerising Henschke jewellery you honour the courage, determination and inventiveness of families of lamp-fired glass bead makers forced to flee their homes with a single suitcase.

About Bohemian glass bead making

Our story begins around 1550 when German glassmakers settled in Gablonz (now Jablonec in the Czech Republic).

400 flourishing years

Gablonz had the perfect sand and precious oxides for glassmaking. Located deep in forested Bohemia, it also had abundant wood and fast-flowing water to fuel and power the furnaces.

In short, a perfect place to make exceptional glassware. Except for one thing. Transporting large, fragile pieces safely to market over rough roads proved impossible.

So, around 1750, the good people of Gablonz reinvented themselves as Europe’s premiere producers of infinitely transportable glass beads and buttons. For almost 200 war- and revolution-ridden years, their luminous lamp-fired beads graced Parisian haute couture and fashion jewellery worldwide.

48 hours to leave

In 1946, in a seismic postwar boundary shift, Gablonz found itself in Russian-controlled Czechoslovakia. The German population was given around 48 hours to leave. Six hundred glass-making families found refuge in Bavaria in Southern Germany. They founded Neu Glabonz (New Glabonz) and set about re-establishing their artisanal, cottage-based industry in a bombed-out munitions factory.

80 years on

Today, much artisanal glass production is wandering off to countries with cheaper production costs – quality and tradition disappear.

I source much of my glass from glass workers in New Gablonz. They supply me with precious glass that only a few people can access.

This increasingly rare and precious glass is made using centuries-old formulas handed down from generation to generation. Some formulas resemble amber, garnet, rubies, and emeralds. One even has a mother-of-pearl sheen. But no matter how beautiful the colours are, more and more formulas disappear. Sadly, once the cellars holding these treasures are empty, they’re gone forever.

That said, The Academy for Glass and Jewellery in Neu Gablonz, where I learned my craft, does much to protect and transmit traditional skills. Its globally renowned teachers and brilliant students also ensure the contemporary art of glass bead making expresses the inventiveness and spirit of new generations.

Images courtesy of Floor Kaspers

Market stall selling Gablonz jewellery, 1930s

Monument for the expulsion of the Sudeten Germans in Neugablonz

Bead Street

About me

Hello, I’m Evelyn

Snorkeler, soccer player, fan of a well-made G & T.

Glass bead maker, goldsmith – specialising in joy and pizzazz

German-born and trained

First as a Gestalt Therapist, then as a Jeweller. While this might not seem like an obvious career progression, there are links.

Gestalt therapy offers a kind of healing alchemy. It’s dynamic, experiential and focused on bringing together body, mind and soul in the present moment.

My beads are born from the alchemy of fire and glass.

Intuition, chemistry and a kind of creative chaos combined with careful process and curious experimentation. Gestalt therapy and glass bead-making share these qualities.

So, here’s the gem

Your Henschke jewellery is a made-in-the-moment mix of unpredictable magic and solid science.

Capture the moment

My craft brought me to Broome

A 2005 stint with legendary Linney’s Jewellers sparked a made-in-heaven hook-up between South Sea Pearls and my lamp-fired glass beads and launched my business.

A love affair with our West Australian way of being has kept me here ever since.

I snorkel in the great, green Indian Ocean. Hello, little lamp-fired sea creatures in search of shell-like ears.

My darling husband brings me a sunset cocktail. Hello, rosy, shimmery, gold-streaked beads born to glam up your little black dress.

So here’s the thing

Your Henschke jewellery honours the exquisite old-world tradition of Bohemian glass-bead making. But, like all great traditions faced with adversity, it’s migrated, morphed and thrived. It’s absorbed the shapes and spirit of its exotic new world home.

Buy the thing

Award-winning late bloomer

I’m not given to wondering whether I’m too late or too old to do whatever (slightly or completely crazy) thing I’m keen to do. I’m prone to holding my nose and jumping in. And chasing awards has never been high on my ‘to-do’ list.

Chasing soccer balls as a veteran defender for the Margaret River Mermaids? That’s very much my thing. And my proudest accolade yet? Most Improved Mermaid.

Nevertheless, as the oldest student (by at least a decade) at the Academy for Glass and Jewellery in Neu Gablonz, I won awards for my designs. And soon after moving from Broome to Cowaramup, one of my necklaces won second prize in the 2011 Vasse Art Award.

At the ripe (ish) age of 40-something, after being featured in Vogue, I made 2020’s Harper’s Bazaar’s list of “Global Young Talent” as one of fifteen designers handpicked for their sustainable approach to slow fashion.

Here’s to sustainability and slow fashion and to stylish, independent-minded women of a certain age who go their own way.

So that’s me

A woman who’s done things, seen things and cares about a creative practice that doesn’t cost the earth.

Choose slow fashion.

Become a Henschke woman