Muzeum Karkonoskie (The Karkonosze Museum) – the largest collection of art glass in Poland. 10,000 exhibits from antiquity to contemporary times. The Karkonosze Museum in Jelenia Góra has for many years specialized in collecting art glass. With its 9,407 items, Mieczysław Buczyński Art Glass Department is the leading collection of the Museum today. The Department was created within the organization structure of the Museum in 1975, and its holdings, which are considered to be the largest and most valuable in Poland, are also among the largest in Europe. The holdings are the result of over thirty years of specialization in the collection, study and exhibition of old and contemporary art glass, but also of iconographic materials, moulds, tools and documents in this field. The main feature of the collection is its focus on the centuries-old glass-making tradition of the Karkonosze and Jizera Mountains. The core of the collection is glass from various historical periods (Baroque, Empire, Biedermeier, Historicism and Art Nouveau) manufactured by glassworks in Silesia, among others: Karlstal, Count Schaffgotsch Josephine in Szklarska Poręba, Preussler in Biała Dolina, Fritz Heckert in Piechowice, Count Harrach in Novy Svet. The collection of ancient glass is accompanied with items from the first half of the 20th century, and with contemporary glass. Based on the collections of the glass department, a permanent exhibition was created in the newly-built wing of the Museum, which is the most important monographic exhibition of glass-making in the Polish-Czech-German borderland. The collection and the permanent exhibition are intended to show the history and the development of glass-making, the stylistic changes that have taken place over the centuries, and the technological achievements in this craft - from ancient times to the present day. The exhibition shows these phenomena using mainly examples of Silesian glass exhibits from other European glassworks, thus placing the rich glass-making traditions of the region in a broader historical context. Jelenia Góra, ul. Jana Matejki 28, phone: + 48 75 75 234 65, sekretariat@muzeumkarkonoskie.pl; www.muzeumkarkonoskie.pl