HISTORY OF GLASS-MAKING.

Ill

Tlie object of tlie miter lias not been to furnish an industrial history of the artbrought down to the present time, but merely to offer an outline from an historicaland antiquarian point of view; he has not, therefore, attempted to give in the latterchapters a full account of the progress of the manufacture in Europe, but hasconfined himself to a few scattered notices, bearing more on the artistic than onthe industrial aspect of the art.

1.—GLASS ANTERIOR TO THE CHRISTIAN ERA.

The art of glass-making was undoubtedly practised at a very early period; one soearly that the true history of the invention of the art is no doubt lost to us, andwe may adopt if we please the story told us by Pliny and by other ancient authors.These state that Phoenician merchants returning from Egypt to Syria with acargo of natron or soda, when cooking on the sandy beach under Mount Carmel,rested their pots on blocks of natron, and that glass was produced in consequence ofthe heat of the fire causing the alkali to form a flux for the silicious sand.

However, as glass is produced accidentally in the course of some metallurgicaloperations, such as the smelting of certain ores; and as it is also formed when vege-table substances containing both silica and an alkali, such as reeds and straw, areburnt in large masses (an accident not at all unlikely to have occurred in Egypt),the original invention may be duo to the acuteness of some one who noticed thefortuitous production of this remarkable substance.

As Mr. Franks has remarked (Art Treasures of the Manchester Exhibition , Sect.“ Vitreous Art"), the legend told us by Pliny points both to the Phoenicians and tothe Egyptians as connected with the early practice of glass-making, and it seemsvery possible that the art may have been invented in Egypt and carried thence toPhoenicia, where, as Pliny tells us, a small spot at the mouth of the river Pel usfurnished sand which had sufficed to produce glass for many centuries. As theVenetians appear to have imported this sand in later times, it is probable that itfurnished the silicious element of glass of superior quality.

-^rTl’l M a ll events supplies us with the earliest positive evidences of glass-making. Sir Gardner Wilkinson (Popular Account of the Ancient Egyptians , Vol. ii.,p. 59) mentions that glass bottles containing red wine are represented on monu-ments of the fourth dynasty, more than 4000 years ago; and in the tombs at BeniHassan, dating from the reign of Osirtascn the First, at least 2000 years B.C.,the process of glass blowing is represented in an unmistakcable manner.* A glassbcad,f published by Sir Gardner Wilkinson, bears the name of Ilatasu, a queen

See Wilkinson’s Manners and Customs of the Ancient Egyptians, Yol. iii., p. 89.t This bead is of a dusky green glass, quite transparent, and is stated to have the specific gravityof bottle glass. It has been suggested that the material is not artificial glass, but obsidian, whichabounds in Egypt and is occasionally to be found of this tint.