Drammens Glassverk (Norwegian for "Drammen Glassworks") was a glass producer at Tangen in Drammen. The works operated from 1873 to 1989 and developed from purely handcrafted production of bottles and small glassware into the only glassworks in Norway to have produced window glass by machine.
Window glass from Drammen held a very high market share at home, and the works was also one of the producers of the well-known household jar Norgesglass. French owners came in during the 1960s, but the works was outcompeted in the late 1970s.
History
The start
On a point called Skanseodden in the Drammensfjord, the Drammen men Frantz Tandberg, Chr. Wriedt, Tom Lorentzen, and Fr. Melhuus built a bottle works in 1872–1873, called Tangens Glasværk, on the land of the Nordby farm. Operation began in 1873. Until 1878 there was no road access, so the business depended on a good quay. The works was originally a pure bottle works, intended for making bottles for the town's breweries as well as distilleries and pharmacy glass, and the glasshouse was built with an eight-pot coal-fired melting furnace.
The works had 21 permanent workers as well as some day laborers and glasshouse boys. It produced bottles of well-known types, made in the Norwegian tradition from raw material that gave a strongly green-colored glass, but brown bottles had also come on the market, which people liked better. A boathouse was converted into what later became the workers' housing "Norge," while another dwelling, "Svenskebrakka," was built at the same time.
The bottle-makers were mostly Swedes, with some Danes among them, while the helper boys were local. A shift began when a melt was ready, but the melting time was variable and uncertain, so the melt might be ready to work in the middle of the night, and a new shift could begin at any hour. Transport of goods to and from the works was awkward, all of it going across the fjord, with finished goods carried mainly in winter by horse and sleigh over the fjord ice. There were no storage buildings for bottles, so they were stored outside, where rain, snow, and frost led to much breakage and many cracked from freezing. Awkward operation, green bottles, large losses, and strong competition from many bottle works in the Nordic countries led to operation being halted at Christmas 1875, as it was no longer profitable.
Drammens Glasværk
In 1877–1878 production was converted to white glass, small glassware, household glass, and lighting glass. The rebuilding was finished in 1878 and operation began under the name Drammens Glasværk, with the works patron Kjellman of Bromö as daily manager and his son-in-law Ole Kraft of Hadeland as glasshouse master. The small-glass makers were mostly Swedes, while some came from Hadeland, and a steam-driven glass-grinding shop was built. The works produced tableware glass, wine glasses, carafes, lighting glass, perfume and ink bottles, oil containers, lamp shades, and more.
The works' glass was known for being attractive and solid. Carafes were made in various animal shapes, and glassware was produced in blue, red, green, clear, brown, and bone-white. Sometimes the glassblowers made walking sticks with inlaid ruby threads as souvenirs.
Turn to window glass
In 1882 the works was taken over by the bank manager H. I. Jacobsen of Kristiania. Around midsummer, Jacobsen's brother-in-law, the experienced glasshouse master Nils H. Hetty (1820–1905), and his son Petter Hetty (1845–1896) came to convert production to window glass, the latter as glasshouse master. On 23 June 1882 the works began a period that over the coming hundred years would make Drammens Glasværk the country's leading window-glass producer. The eight-pot furnace from the small-glass period was used for the first two years but was replaced in August 1884 by a tank furnace, the first such installation in Norway.
Work could run in two 12-hour shifts, working at the furnace while glass was melted in the tank at the same time. After a short while the tank sprang a leak, the molten glass ran out and set fire to the glasshouse, which burned down, and a new glasshouse and tank were built. Window-glass production was pure handwork: the glassblower blew up a large, long sausage of glass, the ends were cut off, and the resulting cylinder was slit lengthwise and folded out into a rectangular pane of a standard 114 × 171 cm. A glassblower could make 40 to 50 panes per shift, depending on the thickness. The works had about 25 employees when Jacobsen went bankrupt in 1886, and it closed again.
Christiania Glasmagasin takes over
The closed Drammens Glasværk was taken over by the skipper Dahl in 1886 but remained idle until P. C. Bjercke took over and resumed operation in February 1887. Conditions were not good; it was said that Bjercke used most of his capital to build tenement blocks in Kristiania instead of paying the workers. There was a one-day strike at the works, and the tank was filled with salt water. In 1891 Bjercke gave up, and operation was again halted.
In 1893 Christiania Glasmagasin bought Drammens Glassverk for 80,000 kroner. By this time Christiania Glasmagasin was almost a monopolist in the Norwegian glass market, controlling most of the large glassworks in Norway, such as Høvik Glassverk, Hadeland Glassverk, Hurdal Glassverk, and Biri Glassverk. The Drammen works was bought to replace the old and unmodern Hurdal Glassverk, which was closed a little later, having failed to manage the change from wood to coal as fuel, and Hurdal's glassblowers and melters were largely transferred to Drammen. Hans Langbach, hired as operations manager, rebuilt and modernized the works for window-glass production.
After the rebuilding, the works got going again in 1895 and employed 135 workers, once the window-glass production from Hurdal, closed just before Christmas 1895, had also been transferred to Drammen. In 1899 operation was expanded from 18 to 27 workshops, and the workforce grew from 80 to 110. A new tank was built and the works enlarged; production was then about 30,000 cases of 10 square meters of glass a year, rising after rebuilding in 1900 to about 40,000 cases. The growth in the workforce led to two new workers' housing buildings, "Skandinavien" and "Finnland." In 1901 production was 41,833 cases of window glass, impressive given the many shutdowns and fires as well as the strong foreign competition that was already lower in price.
Løve and Norges jars
In 1908 production was expanded with preserving jars and canning jars, the well-known "Løveglass" and "Norgesglass," which were produced until 1957; as early as 1909, 112,635 preserving jars were made. In 1912 the company was again expanded by rebuilding, raising production to about 50,000 cases of window glass a year. In 1916 the works bought the Nordby and Åskollen farms and built manager and workers' housing on them. In the 1920s window-glass production underwent a total change from the handcraft method to machine production at the works, which had about 150 employees in 1914 and 232 in 1921.
Industrial response to competition
In 1918 window-glass production was expanded from 27 to 36 workshops. In January 1921 the works had a longer shutdown owing to strong competition from Belgium and high coal prices, and did not get going again until October 1921, with 221 workers and 11 salaried staff. In 1925–1926 a new and larger tank was built.
In the United States and Belgium, machines had been developed for the continuous drawing of window glass, so it was decided to rebuild the works for the machine age in order not to be left behind. In 1928 the works was completely rebuilt for purely mechanical operation by the Belgian Fourcault's method, in which the glass was drawn directly up from the molten mass through a cooling shaft by a float arrangement, emerging continuously as a roughly 130-cm-wide ribbon at the top, where it was cut to suitable lengths at a thickness of between 1 and 7 mm. Four Fourcault machines were installed for window glass and special glass, and from 1 October 1928 production by the cylinder method ceased.
The glassblowers became industrial workers. After a building time of only five months, the tempering of the new tank could begin, and the result was very good: lost market share was won back, sales rose 100 percent in the first five years, and the import of window glass was reduced toward the Second World War to 20 percent of the country's needs. The machines ran continuously, around the clock, all year, for the melting furnace, which held 450 tonnes of molten glass mass, had to have a steady outflow to the machines at all times so they would not be ruined; a shift system was therefore introduced giving workers 24 hours off between 8-hour shifts. In addition to ordinary window glass, production was expanded to thin frame glass and thick special glass, the capacity after rebuilding being about 100,000 cases a year, more than the whole country's needs.
Director Tanberg
In 1930 the engineer Ulf Styren left as manager after leading the works since 1914 and moved to Sweden; in his time, besides full industrialization, much had also been invested in housing to secure a stable workforce. The engineer and works owner Ragnar Tanberg (1899–1982) took over the leadership. Of the Tanberg works-owning family at Hurdal Verk, and grandson of the Ragnar Tandberg who had helped start the works in 1872, he had trained as an electrical engineer at the Norwegian Institute of Technology in 1923 and worked seven years in the United States. With this background, both professional and familial, he was a trusted man in the owning group Christiania Glasmagasin, and he remained the works' manager until 1964.
A glass-grinding shop and mirror-silvering shop were set up, and the works also had its own sawmill, planing mill, and case factory, which supplied all kinds of cases for its own needs and special cases to order, using 4,000 dozen planks a year and making 300 to 400 cases a day. In 1932 a plant was built for casting wired and ornamental glass with its own melting furnace, and from 1933 to 1947 wired glass was produced, except during the Second World War. Because of the increased demand for window glass, however, wired-glass production was closed, and an electric melting furnace with a glass-drawing machine was built to add to the machines on the gas-fired furnace.
Important industry under the occupation
After the occupation of 9 April 1940, a new situation arose. The authorities declared the business vital and required it to keep production going, extensive building and securing works were carried out, and a guard force of 40 men was set up. But the supply of fuel and raw material became a problem, as almost everything had previously been imported. Improvisation was possible: Belgian sand was replaced with Norwegian quartz and new deposits of dolomite were found in Norway, but coal eventually became scarce, so operation stopped in 1942 until the works acquired a briquetting plant based on coal dust and sulfite liquor, after which it resumed eight months later.
Production was higher than in the last years before the war, and demand for preserving jars was three times greater than before, for now everyone was to preserve food. All employees had a quota of 12 jars, and the works also saw to it that the workers got something to put in them: anyone who wished was allotted a plot at the Nordby or Solum farm, and in time the supply service also came to include the purchase of vegetables, herring, fish, and cod-liver oil.
From gas and coal to electric melting