Glass industry

“ It is strange that so little interest has been taken in a craft in which for some thirty years England surpassed all competitors, creating a wave of fashion which influenced the glass industry throughout the whole of Europe.
In the report of the Excise Commission a list is given of the glass manufactories which paid the excise duty in 1833. There were 105 factories in England, 10 in Scotland and 10 in Ireland. In England the chief centres of the industry were Bristol, Birmingham, London, Manchester, Newcastle, Stourbridge and York. ”

“ It is true, of course, that pressed articles do not show the same smooth and brilliant surface which is characteristic of the fire-polish of blown articles, while the facility with which elaborate surface ornamentation can be applied by this process has not tended to artistic refinement in design, but the great majority of cheap and useful glass articles of domestic use have been made available by the development of the pressing industry. ”

“ In 1663 the duke of Buckingham, although unable to obtain a renewal of the monopoly of glass-making, secured the prohibition of the importation of glass for mirrors, coach plates, spectacles, tubes and lenses, and contributed to the revival of the glass industry in all its branches. Evelyn notes in his Diary a visit in 1673 to the Italian glass-house at Greenwich, “where glass was blown of finer metal than that of Murano,” and a visit in 1677 to the duke of Buckingham’s glass-works, where they made huge “vases of mettal as cleare, ponderous and thick as chrystal ”

“ EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY GLASS THE eighteenth century is the “Golden Age” of the collector of English glass. At the beginning of the century glass manufacture was already a flourishing industry. Vessels of all kinds for ornament, keepsakes, and for domestic use were being produced in great quantities, and there was a strong and growing competition between the native craftsmen and the glass-workers of Venice, Bohemia, Germany, and the Low Countries, a competition which, thanks to the superiority of the new English “flint” glass, was steadily trending in favour of the English product. ”

“ According to the local tradition, the glass industry was established as far back as the eleventh century by a body of immigrants from Normandy, and a French origin has been found for the names of the families employed in the glass-works. [126] At a later date, probably in the fourteenth century, other workmen came from Murano, so that when by the end of the fifteenth century the skilled glass-workers of L’Altare began to seek employment in foreign countries, they became the principal agency by which the newer methods of the Venetians were introduced into Northern Europe. ”

“ It may however lead to a better understanding of the difference between the optical glass industry and the fabrication of commercial glass, and lead the reader to a fuller realization of how fine a work of art is a finished objective or mirror as compared with the crude efforts of the early makers or the hasty bungling of too many of their successors. ”

“ With our present increasing output, the question of a market is no less important than the technical operations. The product is so fragile and so bulky that the market must needs be fairly accessible. Difficulties of transportation wrecked a number of the earlier enterprises. An observer of the first attempts at glass-making in Virginia reported that the industry would have done very well had there been any market for its wares.
These are the five elements which in the kaleidoscope of industrial progress have given us the series of pictures constituting the history of the glass industry. ”

“ There are from 1,500 to 2,000 hands employed in these works, representing such a combination of science, genius, skilled and varied industry as perhaps no other establishment in the world can present. For, although they are called Glass Works, when you enter the light-house department, you have ironworks on a great scale in minute ramification. In the buildings in which a common-sized lumber-yard of boards is made up into boxes for the exportation of glass to America or other foreign countries, you have wood-works of equal extent. ”

“ We take glass so much for granted today that it is difficult for us to realize how rare and precious a commodity it was to the first settlers of this country. It is significant that the first attempt to establish a manufacturing industry in the American colonies was the building and equipping of a glass house. About the middle of the XVIII century, glass began to be manufactured upon an extensive scale. The Stiegel Glass Works, the second successful glass factory, and the best known of the early American works, commenced operations at Manheim, Pa., in 1765. ”

“ This company prospered and was the first successful glass manufacturing company in the United States. Then followed others that were successful. As early as 1865 there was manufactured, in the vicinity of Boston, glass that was the equal of the best flint glass manufactured in England. Two hundred and fifty [Pg 18] years from the time the first rough bottles were exported from Virginia to England seems a long time to us, but how short a time it really is in the life of this ancient art—this drama of glass.
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It is always interesting to trace the history of a great industry. ”

“ The working processes, however, differ entirely from one class of product to another, as obviously the process employed for the production of a sheet of plate-glass can have little in common with that used in the manufacture of a wine-glass. On the other hand, the modes of working hot glass are not so numerous as the products that are produced, so that we find very similar appliances and manipulation recurring in various branches of the industry. ”

“ It is not, however, from Italy, or even from Mediterranean lands, that the greater part of the Roman glass in our collections comes, and this is especially the case if we confine ourselves to the ‘hollow ware’—the true blown glass with which we are at present concerned. Already in Pliny’s time the new industry had spread to Spain and Gaul, where, before long, favoured no doubt by the cheapness of the fuel and of the raw materials, important centres of manufacture must have sprung up. ”

“ These related above all to the manufacture of mirrors of glass, backed with lead, of which I have already said something. Again, the making of lenses, the oglarii di vitro or lapides ad legendum, now became a distinct industry. It was at this time (for instance in the year 1300) that we find the Cristallai di Cristallo di Rocca complaining of the competition of the glass-makers. These carvers and polishers of rock crystal were already established as an important guild in Venice; they looked upon the glass-workers as intruders. ”

“ It is possible that the picture does not represent Egyptian glass-blowers, but is a traveller’s record of the process of glass-blowing seen in some foreign or subject country. The scarcity of specimens of early glass-ware actually found in Egypt, and the advanced technique of those which have been found, lead to the supposition that glass-making was exotic and not a native industry. ”

“ The clay must be of the finest quality, and be carefully freed from extraneous matters which might affect the quality of the glass. Hence the manufacture of the “pots” is itself an industry of some importance, and as each costs some £10, they form an important item in the expense of manufacture, especially as the pots are short-lived, some eight to ten weeks being the average life of one of them. ”

“ They can well afford to publish their achievements, for about few of its material products can the nineteenth century boast with so much show of justice as about its window-glass. It is true that past ages have produced quite as remarkable technical results in other departments of industry, but in this one product, at least, the present decade appears to be unique. Not even China and Egypt, which have a standing claim of priority on all the arts and sciences, dispute with the modern glass-maker. ”

“ The chief centers of the manufacture in the United States are Pennsylvania, New Jersey and New York. A large part of Pennsylvania glass comes from Pittsburg. Pressed glass is an American invention. With a few exceptions the United States is fully up to Europe in this industry. The production of all kinds in 1909 was $92,185,693. See Sanzay's Marvels of Glass-Making and Wallace-Dunlop's Glass in the Old World. ”

“ On the other hand the readervi must be warned to bear in mind that the peculiar conditions of the glass manufacturing industry have led to the practice on the part of manufacturers of keeping their processes as secret as possible, so that the task of the author who would give an accurate account of the best modern processes used in any given department of the industry is beset with great difficulties. ”

“ We may perhaps regard the glass-works of Tell-el-Amarna as due in the main to the caprice of that eccentric sovereign Akhenaten. They were probably started at his orders to supply the demand for the new material then coming 26 into favour at his court. In so far as the making of glass ever became an industry in Egypt, we must look rather to the neighbourhood of the Delta for its development. There at least fuel would be more abundant, and there a supply of soda was at hand in the ashes of marine plants, even if the natron of the adjacent salt lakes was not yet used for the purpose. ”

“ One source of this apparent caprice in the presence or absence of glass of artistic merit at times and at places where the contrary might have been looked for, may be found, perhaps, 226 in the fact that although, since Roman days at all events, the making of glass has always been an important industry, it is an industry that has only incidentally come into connection with the æsthetic movements of the time. ”

“ The applications of glass are so exceedingly extensive, that it is inconvenient, if not impossible, to manufacture every species of it at one glass-house or at one establishment. Some, therefore, confine their attention to the production of window glass, and such articles of hollow ware as may be made, with profit, from the same kind of paste. Others make [181] vials and other species of ware, employed by the druggist, apothecary, and chemist. And again, the efforts, at some factories, are confined entirely to the manufacture of flint glass, or to that of plate glass for mirrors. ”

“ As the quality of the product decreases, so also do the demands upon the purity of raw materials, until finally for the manufacture of common green bottles, even such very heterogeneous substances as basaltic rock and the miscellaneous residues of broken, defective and half-melted glass forming the refuse of other glassworks may be utilised more or less satisfactorily. ”

“ It must be admitted that to undertake such work involves the expenditure of much time and money on the part of a manufacturer, while the field is so large and the problems so complicated that any adequate return cannot be promised for the immediate future; on the other hand the very size of the field and the difficulty of the problems offers the promise of the greatest ultimate reward; a really important scientific discovery in connection with glass would be certain to bring in its train industrial developments whose limits it is impossible to foresee. ”

“ Where, however, large quantities of flint-glass are made every day, it is possible and proper to make more perfect arrangements for the mechanical handling and mixing of the lead with the other ingredients by the provision of suitable mixing and transporting machinery, so arranged as to be dust-tight. It is only fair to state, however, that partly under their own initiative, partly under pressure from the authorities, glass makers in this country are complying with these requirements in an adequate manner. ”

“ Thus while the chemical manufacturer can purify his products by filtration, crystallisation or some other process of separation, the glass-maker must eliminate all undesirable ingredients before they are permitted to enter the furnace, and the stringency of this condition is increased by the fact that the transparency of glass makes the detection of defects of colour or quality exceedingly easy. For the production of the best varieties of glass, therefore, an exacting standard of purity is applied to the substances used as raw materials. ”

“ This factor has been neglected by some manufacturers, with the result that much of the wired glass of commerce is liable to crack spontaneously some time after it has left the manufacturer’s hands, while there is also much loss by breakage during the process of manufacture. ”

“ As a result of this enlarged production, the history of glass shows a marked increase in quality and a marked decrease in price. The interest aroused by this progress is not only technical and commercial, but, in the case of window-glass, in a still wider sense social and economic. In filling the windows of our houses with transparency, the glassmaker has been a public benefactor. His benefaction is the greater, since the material he supplies is now at the disposal of even those of limited means. We hardly appreciate the full significance of cheap window-glass. ”

“ The process of pressing being a purely mechanical one and requiring no very elaborate plant and little skilled labour, has placed upon the market a host of cheap and extremely useful articles, thus serving to widen very considerably the useful applications of glass. ”

“ The state of purity in which the various substances are commercially obtainable also enters largely into the question, since the greatest possible degree of purity in the raw materials is essential to the production of glass of good colour, or rather freedom from colour. ”