Marvels of glass-making in all ages

Preface

MONG the discoveries due to chance and perfected by

^ man's intellect, the invention of Glass is certainlyone of the most important.

Besides the fact that Glass satisfies a considerable number of our most ordinary wants, it is also to its power that we must attribute in a great degree the ever-progressive march of science ; and indeed it is by multiplying indefinitely the strength of man's organ of sight, that Glass lays bare the most hidden works of creation to his investigation.

Thanks to its aid, there are no longer any impenetrable mysteries for science ; by degrees everything is seen, studied, explained, and analyzed. Two examples, taken from the extremes of creation, the infinitely great and imperceptibly small, will sufficiently prove this. The Telescope, which brings the heavenly bodies within the range of the astronomer's study ; and the Microscope, which may be said to be still more useful, inasmuch as it is the light of all natural science, and the source of the most curious and important discoveries. It shows us much, the existence of which we did not even suspect ; it opens a new world vi

PREFACE.

before us ; the most imperceptible atom of nature assumes a body and increases so much in size, that where there was apparently nothing we see myriads of beings.

Both these examples certainly deserve the name of Marvels ; but they are not the only wonders worked by Glass, which obeys every wish of man, and lends itself to all his wants and fancies.

Does not our every-day life profit by its benefits } Light is admitted to our houses by means of glass, which yet excludes the inclemencies of the seasons ; our forms are reproduced in looking-glasses ; glass lustres double the lights in a chandelier by their numerous reflections ; and if we glance into a dining-room, glass is still before us in the shape of decanters and drinking-glasses of pure and graceful shapes.

So many different appliances are none the less marvellous because we are accustomed to s-ee them every day, and they do not the less deserve to have each of them their story told. This is the work we have undertaken.

If, notwithstanding our researches, and all the care we have taken in their classification, the reader still finds something forgotten, or even some errors (and we are far from thinking our work is exempt from them), he must kindly forgive them in consideration of all that our subject embraces.

The fear which obliges us to this avowal will surprise no one when we say that one of the most learned men of our period, M. Peligot, treating the question of Glass under its

PREFACE.

vii different chemical and practical forms, says to his readers : " I am under no illusion as to the imperfections of my work,* but I hope that allowance will be made for the difficulties found in collecting the scattered documents on glass working, a manufacture which lives in tradition, which avoids publicity, and on which, if I except the articles in encyclopaedias and chemical treatises, no complete work has been attempted for more than a century and a half."

If, through an excess of modesty, M. Peligot claims the reader's indulgence for himself, who has certainly less need of it than any one else, how can we, at the commencement of this book, forbear to solicit a greater and more necessary indulgence ?

"^Da Douze lemons sur VArt de la Verrerie.

ALPHABETICAL TABLE OF CONTENTS.

PAGE

Achromatism. — Its etymology — What it is— How obtained — Its

Annealing 45

Aristotle. — Mentions plated glass being used as mirrors . . 65

Baccarat. — Offshoot from a Belgian glass factory . . .32

Bacon (Francis).— Quoted . . . . . . .156

(Roger). — Supposed inventor of telescopes . . .252

Barthelemy (L' Abbe). — Quoted . . . . . .178

Beads for Necklaces and Ghaplets:—

■ Their antiquity ........ 5

Belgium. — Glass-works . . . . . . . * . 32

Beroviero (Angelo). — Venetian glass-maker — His history . . 24 Berry (Duchesse de). — Had squares of oiled linen in her windows (1413) 53

Binocular Glasses. — See Opera Glasses.

Bohemia. — Possessed glass-works of its own at an early period . 2 7

Its method of manufacture . . . . . .28

Style of ornament . . . . . . . 27, 114

Glass in the Cluny Museum . . . . . .27

Cause of the cheapness of its production . . . .28

Wages of the workmen . . . . . . .29

BoNTEMPS (M.).— Quoted on the manufacture of filigree glass . 183

On the composition of flint glass . . . . .219

And of crown glass . . . . . . . .222

X

Table Of Contents

PAGE

BoNzi (Francois de).— Reply to Colbert 86

BoRDA improves lighthouses . . . . . . .258

Chapter I

FEW questions have been more discussed than that of the origin of glass. Are we indebted for it to Phoenicia, Phrygia, Thebes, or Sidon ? Or, going back into ages long before the foundation of these kingdoms, must its invention, as many writers maintain, be fixed at a period when men, having discovered fire and submitted to its action natural bodies, either separately or together, observed, among other phenomena, the vitrifaction of certain masses ?

To admit this last opinion is to recognize as the inventor Tubal-Cain,* son of Lamech and Zillah, who, according to tradition, was the eighth man after Adam, and who is mentioned in Genesis iv. 22 as " an instructor of every artificer in brass and iron."

This acknowledged antiquity was certainly sufficiently

* Born in the year of the world 130 (3870 B.C.), which would carry the discovery of glass back 5739 years.

venerable to content the most scrupulous when M. Reimann, a German savant^ maintained that the translation from the Hebrew was defective, and that it should be read that Tubal-Cain had only taught the engraving on copper and on iron.

This reading, which only represents the son of Lamech and Zillah as an artist embellishing iron and bronze worked by others before his time, would oblige us to go back still further in order to find the first smelter of metals, and in the attempt to obtain such a problematic result, we should not have left to us more than a hundred years to the commencement of the world. We, therefore, request the permission of our readers to quit these suppositions, and to come as quickly as possible to facts attested by actual remains, for after all this antediluvian erudition, we remain in utter ignorance as to the date of the discovery of glass.

Before, however, coming to the remains themselves, we must give our readers the account given by Pliny ^ of the accidental manner in which glass was discovered. " It is said," narrates the classic writer, that some Phoenician merchants, having landed on the coast of Palestine, near the mouth of the river Belus, were preparing for their repast, and not finding any stones on which to place their pots, took some cakes of nitre from their cargo for that purpose. The nitre being thus submitted to the action of fire, with the sand on the shore, they together

* Tacitus gives the same account as Pliny, but in a simpler manner, for leaving unexplained the process of melting employed, and entirely suppressing the mention of the cooking vessels,- he merely states that some sand found at the mouth of the Belus, a river which flow^s into the sea of JudDea, when mixed with nitre and melted by fire, produced glass.

The shore, though of moderate extent, still affords an inexhaustible supply of sand.