CALENDARS on my desk, record books of orders, dates at the top of scores of thousands of letters all told me how the years were passing, but I had no feeling of movement. Time was always the present, filled with beauty and achievement. That first year in the new rooms on Příkopy went on its way and it was 1935, then 1936, then 1937. Each year brought its own new experiences, its own widening horizons. I continued to learn and to find opportunities to express my expanding knowledge in creative forms that received ever wider attention. No man can ask more of life than that.

With it all, the boy who had spent his early years in one room in Smichov derived his own brand of amusement from the sometimes pompous, often silly, and many times kindly personages who considered themselves gracious when they allowed press photographers to take their pictures as they inspected my work. The papers had a way of considering glass as photogenic as the visitors. Without a sharp sense of humor, the balance of my small canoe could easily have been upset.

We furnished complete table settings in china and crystal for scores of embassies, legations and consulates all over the world. We were patronized by increasing numbers of Eastern potentates. Of all our customers they afforded the sharpest stimulus to my imagination, with their circumlocutions, their sumptuous robes, their oriental manners, and their extensive retinues.

I find my own brand of pleasure in recalling the day I looked upon the face of a woman who was shielded from the public gaze. The Imperial Embassy of Iran in Berlin telephoned a request for my presence in that capital. I had no wish to go to Germany for any purpose, but the request could hardly be avoided, even though I had a previous engagement with Madame Gamelin, wife of the French general. The Empress of Iran had indicated a wish to receive me for the purpose of discussing our tableware. So I made my excuses to Madame Gamelin and left on the night train.

During my entire stay in the German capital I was accompanied by a manager of Rosenthal’s china factory who was also an officer of the Schutzstaffel, presumably to guard against the possibility of my making any sales outside the Iranian Embassy. At the Embassy I was met by the Chief of Protocol, and there we sat in a reception room for six and a half hours until the Empress indicated her readiness to talk with me. It was ample time in which to learn that few strangers ever looked upon the face of Her Majesty. Not even guards at the Embassy were allowed in her presence. The curtains in the tonneau of her limousine were drawn as she drove through the streets. I was also instructed not to address the Empress directly. The Schutzstaffel man was impressed.

Late in the afternoon a door opened and I was bowed into the royal presence. I suppose I expected her to look like a vision out of the Arabian Nights, but what I found was a short, middle-aged woman in smart Parisian clothes, with henna-colored hair and high make-up on her olive skin. Two of her daughters were with her, shy, gazelle-like girls who dropped their heads when I made the mistake of glancing in their direction. Coffee was served, designs and colors and shapes of glasses were discussed through the Chief of Protocol, photographs were inspected, and finally the Empress indicated that she wanted a complete set of glass for her palace in Teheran, including crystal lamps for several rooms. The designs were to be of my choosing. The interview was over and I was ushered out.

Under the guise of courtesy, the man from the Gestapo invited me to dinner. I had already accepted an invitation from the Chief of Protocol, so the German joined us with no one’s permission. After dinner he insisted on showing us Berlin’s night clubs. I bade them both farewell when I took the morning train back to Prague.

This was the year when I was asked to select all the glass sent by Czechoslovakia to an exhibition held in the Brooklyn Museum; when some of our best pieces found their way into a permanent collection in the Sèvres Museum in France; when the Carlsbad Factories won a nationwide competition for a crystal loving cup to be given to famous visitors in Prague, as well as for sports prizes, in place of old-fashioned pewter or silver loving cups. This was the year when I opened my first exhibition in the Savoy Hotel in London and there met Queen Marie of Rumania. She was never niggardly with her charm, and she spread it around foursquare that afternoon. It was also the year when we furnished the Kabul Palace in Afghanistan with a magnificent set of china and crystal; when Myron Selznick came to talk about his Slovakian ancestors and buy Christmas gifts for a long list of Hollywood actors; when I was decorated with the officer’s star of the Order of the Nile by the Egyptian government.

After the London exhibition, others were held in Vienna, in Geneva, in Bern and in Paris. More maharajahs ordered florid designs, and the number of palaces without our glass was growing less than the number of those we had furnished. Prince Regent Paul of Yugoslavia knew what he wanted for his table without hesitation. King Carol of Rumania had a difficult time making up his mind. After hours of hesitation he finally asked Crown Prince Mihai to make a choice. When the order was received, it specified that the letter L was to be engraved on each piece. Lady Austen Chamberlain renewed our liking for the simple, unostentatious charm which we had learned to associate with English gentlewomen, and Lady Louis Mountbatten ordered a set of china and glass for her new home on Upper Brook Street.

So the orders followed one another, decorated with glittering names. In 1937 I went to London again, and again to Paris. King Ghazi of Iraq sent an order for his palace; so did the Sultan of Johore, whom I met in London with the Sultana. That was the summer when I was appointed a member of the International Jury for glass and jewelry at the Paris World Exposition. When I returned to Prague, Dmitri Kessel was there, taking photographs of the country for Life and Time. He went through both our factories, in Carlsbad and at the Bohemian Ceramic Works, and the results later appeared in Fortune.

One day Mrs. Valerie Claire Manville, mother of the well-known Tommy, came to the showroom, complaining bitterly because no one seemed to know who she was, but she ended by making all the salesgirls love her. She traveled in a cream-colored limousine with a personal maid, a chauffeur and a secretary, but she had no notion of the value of glass and said so. When she told Milada to pick out something really nice and send it to her in the United States, Milada did so gladly.

Every piece in the showroom Milada understood and treasured. When a customer came to look and stayed to admire, she felt a true pleasure in sharing her enthusiasm. Later, when those hours she gave so happily were translated into an order, the commercial aspect was sublimated for her, and she remembered usually the conversation rather than the sets purchased.