A Shorter History of Glass

In northern Europe throughout the middle ages small glass factories continued to work, some of them deep in the great forests which supplied timber for their furnaces. From these workshops came the glass for church windows, and the twelth-century craftsmen learned to make their glass in an increasing number of colours to be used in the making up of the patterned windows.

The secret of making colourless glass had been lost in Europe, but by the fifteenth century the glass workers of the Italian city of Venice had rediscovered it. They called it Cristallo because it looked like the natural stone known as rock crystal.

The Venetian glass-workers also knew how to make coloured glass - emerald green and purple, for instance - which they decorated with enamels. Among the highly prized objects made at this time were stately goblets and large jars or ewers.

Italian glass-workers went all over Europe taking their craft with them, so that by the seventeenth century their types of glass came to be made in many places side by side with the less fashionable green country glass.

By the end of the seventeenth century Venetian glass had lost its flavour and the demand was for a more solid type of glass. In satisfying this demand the English and German glass-workers were particularly succesful.

The Germans made a thick glass suitable for wheel engraving (the thin Venetian glass had been too fragile for this). The English also produced a glass that was both heavy and brilliant. This was first used as a drinking glass with a thick stem, butin 1745 a tax was put on glass according to its weight and so lighter glasses were made.

In the second half of the nineteenth century all sorts of new methods were used in glass manufacture (such as glass made with coloured layers or glass with bubbles in), also at this time there were new methods of etching; that is, by letting acid eat away the glass in certain places.

During the nineteenth and twentieth centuries glass came into industry, science and everyday life in a remarkable number of ways. No doubt the future will bring many varied and interesting advances, but it is worth remembering that glass began as an object of great value and should always be considered as such.

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