ENGLISH GLASS OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY
We may probably regard the reign of William III. as the turning-point
in the history of our English glass as in so many other of our minor
arts. It is to that period that one must assign the first beginnings of
our modern industrial life,[252] and it is in the Dutch influence, at
that time so dominant, that the principal stimulus is to be found.
Of the window and mirror glass of the period a most interesting series
is preserved at Hampton Court. Many of the panes of the windows facing
the garden façades of the palace are strongly tinged with purple, a
result of the process by which the colourless protoxide of manganese is
reconverted into the purple bin-oxide under the influence of sunlight.
Placed between the windows in William III.’s state bedroom are some
curious mirrors with frames ornamented with _appliqué_ plates of deep
blue glass carved into patterns and monograms. Observe, too, a charming
mirror of the same period over the fireplace in this room.
It is, however, still difficult to point to surviving examples to
illustrate the vessels of English glass made about this period. Certain
covered bowls (such as that reproduced by Mr. Hartshorne on p. 238 of
his great work) may date back to the end of the seventeenth century.
The same author gives an illustration of a fine posset-pot with quilled
handles, preserved at Chastleton. This bowl, decorated with roses,
masks, and berry-like prunts, may be as old as Charles II.’s reign.
When one calls to mind the picturesque pottery—the slip-ware—that was
made at the time, it would seem not unlikely that in the local
glass-houses something similar may have been attempted in glass.
We have, of course, plenty of glass wine-bottles, a few of which may
date as far back as the reign of Charles I. These bottles are mostly of
a black impure glass and of a globular form, squat and compressed at
the sides, reminding one of the leather _botel_ from which our word
bottle is derived. Similar bottles are found in the Low Countries, and
they may often be seen in Dutch pictures. The introduction of the
practice of bottling wine, as far as England is concerned, is generally
connected with Sir Kenelm Digby, that universal genius who, in the
reign of Charles I., was occupied with so many branches of the arts.
Drinking-bottles of this description, dating from the seventeenth and
eighteenth centuries, are often dug up while excavating the foundations
of houses. An extensive collection, chiefly of local origin, may be
seen in the Guildhall Museum, and Mr. Hilton Price has a representative
series derived also from excavations in the city. The surface of these
bottles is often covered with an iridescent scale giving them an
appearance of great age. A circular stamp bearing the maker’s name is
sometimes found on the shoulder, but these stamped bottles are in all
cases, I think, of later date. There is a small collection of these
stamps in the British Museum.
I have already pointed out that during the reign of Charles II. the
prevalent form of the drinking-glass was still of the old Venetian
type. The stem was almost non-existent; it was at best represented by a
spherical bulb connecting the two cones—the upper one often truncated,
the lower very shallow—that formed respectively the bowl and the foot.
In the Spanish Netherlands, before the end of the century, another form
became prevalent: the stem now assumes more or less a baluster form,
divided from the bowl by a distinct shoulder; the knop of this stem is
often hollow, and generally duplicated. In some cases a silver coin is
found lying loose in this hollow bulb. Such a form we may perhaps
regard as the starting-point for the vast and varied series of English
drinking-glasses which constitutes the principal element in a
collection of English glass.
Since the drinking-glass forms so important a part in the history of
our native glass, perhaps it may be well to turn for a moment to
consider the process by which a vessel of this sort is made, the more
so as we are told by a high practical authority that in the manufacture
of a wine-glass every principle of glass-blowing is illustrated (H. J.
Powell, _Principles of Glass-making_, 1883). Wine-glasses, says Mr.
Powell, may have either a ‘straw shank or stem’ pulled out from the
substance of the bowl itself, or more often a ‘stuck shank’ made from a
separate piece of glass subsequently added to the bowl; again, the foot
may be either blown or cast.
I will take as an example a wine-glass with a ‘straw shank’ and a blown
foot. ‘The glass for the bowl is first gathered and blown to the
required shape. Upon the centre of the base of the bowl, which is still
attached to the blow-pipe, a small quantity of molten glass is
skilfully dropped from the end of a working rod [the pontil]. Part of
the added glass is formed into a small button by the grip of the spring
tool [procello], and the residue is pulled out into the stem. In the
meantime a smaller bulb has been blown and its extremity fixed to the
end of the stem from which the button has previously been removed. The
smaller bulb is severed in the midst and the cup-shaped remnant
adhering to the stem is reheated, opened by the insertion of one point
of the spring tool, and by rapid rotation thrown out into a disc or
foot by the agency of centrifugal force.’ The pontil is now attached to
the foot by means of a seal of molten glass, and the upper bulb (the
future bowl of the glass) ‘wetted off’ from the blowing-tube by the
application of a moistened iron. The glass, held by the pontil attached
to the foot, is completed by reheating the severed edges of what is now
the bowl, cutting them even with the shears and rounding them by a
second exposure to the fire. The now completed wine-glass is finally
separated from the pontil by a jerk and taken to the annealing oven. A
rough edge remaining where the pontil was attached is at the present
day invariably smoothed by grinding; not so, however, in the case of
the older glasses, and this is a point to be noted by the collector. In
Germany and Bohemia the rough edge of the bowl after shearing is ground
even on the wheel instead of being rounded off in the furnace, and
foreign-made glasses may be often distinguished by their more angular
rim.
We shall now be in a better position to attack that extensive and
complicated series, the drinking-glasses of the eighteenth century. Mr.
Hartshorne, who in his _Old English Glasses_[253] has treated the
subject in great detail, mentions incidentally that he has made more
than a thousand full-sized outlines of glasses that have passed through
his hands. We must be content, then, to accept the classification of
such an authority, although some of the divisions may seem a little
arbitrary to one who has no claim to be an expert. Thus out of sixteen
families of English eighteenth-century glass there are only two that
contain any objects other than drinking-glasses in the narrower sense
of the word; again, four or five of the groups are based chiefly upon
the liquor—wine, beer, mead, mumm, syllabub, cider, cordial water, or
punch—that these glasses were presumably made to contain. In a
division of glasses from this latter point of view I shall only mention
three heads which alone seem to me of sufficient importance to merit
separate treatment—wine-glasses, glasses for ale and beer, and glasses
for cordial waters—and even these, though varying in size, pass
through the same series of shapes in bowl and stem. Again, a cross
division may be made distinguishing the ruder and somewhat more solid
household and tavern glasses from those destined for the table of the
wealthy.
The main lines, however, of the classification of these
drinking-glasses must be based upon the form of the bowl and upon the
outline and construction of the stem. But first a word may be said of
the relation of our eighteenth-century glasses to their predecessors
and contemporaries on the Continent. On the whole, one may conclude
that the new forms and methods of decoration grew up in Holland, in the
Spanish Netherlands, or again in the Liége district, towards the end of
the seventeenth century, when the old Italian influence was giving way
to processes and schemes of decoration that had their origin in Germany
and Bohemia. The methods of the great firms of the Bonhommes and the De
Colnets were above all eclectic; the opaque-twisted stems of their
glasses were essentially of Venetian origin, the engraved bowl had its
prototype in Germany, and the material finally—the ‘metal’—before
long was English.
In the case of the English glasses that followed in the same lines, the
greatest care seems to have been given to the metal employed; next to
that, the construction of the stem and the outline of the bowl received
attention; on the other hand, the engraving on the bowl, compared to
the contemporary work in Germany and the Netherlands, was for the most
part of a summary, not to say rude character. As for the foot, the
margin was generally slightly ‘welted’ or folded over from above, so
that the glass stands only on the rim; by this the solidity of the foot
is at the same time increased.[254] Otherwise the only variation of
importance in the shape of the foot depends upon its greater or less
flatness; in the earlier glasses the central part generally rises up to
form a dome, upon which rests the base of the stem. The square bases
with plinth-like steps belong to a much later time and are generally
associated with facetted ware. It may be noted that the glasses of the
eighteenth century stand on the whole on a relatively wider foot than
those now made.
The first point of importance in considering the stem is to distinguish
those that are drawn—these are the ‘straw-shanks,’ formed of the same
piece of metal as the bowl—from the ‘stuck-shanks’ that are made of a
separate piece of glass. The latter form by far the larger class. As
regards the outline, the stem may be either a plain rod or cylinder, or
again of baluster shape—this last but a modification of the double
knops that constitute the whole shank of some seventeenth-century
glasses. In other cases the stem is marked by spiral lines in
relief—that is to say, it is ‘rib-twisted,’ or, finally, it may be cut
into flat facets. But perhaps the most important division of the stems
of our English glasses is that based upon the nature of the spiral
lines of greater or less complexity so generally found in the interior
of the cylinder of glass. These lines may be formed either by strings
or bands of opaque white, or more rarely of coloured glass, or again by
empty threads formed by drawing out a bubble of air. These are the
opaque-twisted and the air-twisted stems respectively.
If now we turn to the outline of the main division of the glass, the
bowl, this has been made the basis of a division that classes these
bowls as straight-sided, waisted, bell-shaped, and finally, bowls with
a curve resembling either the ogee or the double ogee of the architect.
[Illustration:
_PLATE XLIV_
ENGLISH WINE GLASSES
EIGHTEENTH CENTURY
1. WITH SIXPENCE OF QUEEN ANNE WITHIN THE HOLLOW KNOP 2. ENGRAVED
WITH PORTRAIT OF THE PRETENDER AND JACOBITE MOTTO 3. THE ULSTER
“IMMORTAL MEMORY” GLASS]
The air-drawn stem, if not an English invention, was certainly brought
to great perfection here at an early period. We must seek the origin of
this device in the large ‘blows,’ often of very irregular shape, that
fill the knop or bulb on the stems of earlier glasses.[255] This ‘blow’
is sometimes prolonged into a sort of tail which passes down nearly to
the foot. In other cases we find several smaller ‘tears’ in the same
bulb, formed, it appears, by puncturing, while it is still soft, the
little mass of glass destined to form the bulb, and then covering it
with a second gathering. These air-beaded stems are mostly of Low
Country origin; but they are of interest to us, as we may probably
regard them as the starting-point of the air-twists which are formed by
drawing out and twisting the original spherical mass, containing one or
more of these bubbles or tears. It may be mentioned that in a general
way a loose, widely spaced spiral is characteristic of the earlier
glasses, while the tightly twisted stems are only found on late
examples. This applies also to the spirals on the rib-twisted stems of
plain glass. There is another point that should not be overlooked: this
is that the twist on eighteenth-century glasses always descends from
right to left, while in modern imitations the reverse direction is
generally taken.
Perhaps the earliest type of English glass is one with a waisted bowl,
engraved with a full-blown rose, and supported on a rib-twisted stem;
but those on stems loosely air-twisted may sometimes be as old.
There is a glass in the British Museum with a bell-shaped bowl engraved
with a rose, a pink, and a third flower of undetermined species; this
we may take as a good type of the earlier drinking-glass. The bowl is
divided from the air-twisted stem by a hollow bulb containing a
sixpence of Charles II. dated 1679. It will be noted how closely the
berry-like stamps on the bulb resemble the prunts on the stem of a
_roemer_; they occur again on the already mentioned posset-cup from
Chastleton. Such decoration may, perhaps, be regarded as characteristic
of the English glass of the end of the seventeenth century.
The opaque-twisted stem formed, on the same system as the Venetian
_vetro di trina_, from rods containing threads of opaque white glass or
_latticinio_, is on the other hand not a specially English type. Such
stems were in great favour in the Low Countries and in the north of
France, and it is even possible that the rods of glass from which our
English examples are formed may have been imported from Venice or from
the Netherlands.[256] The white lines are sometimes combined with
air-twists to form complicated patterns.
The glasses with straight-sided bowls may, on the whole, be attributed
to an early period, and together with the contemporary bell-shaped
glasses they constitute an essentially English class. Those again with
the so-called ogee bowls are especially associated with the Bristol
glass-houses. Glasses with bowls of this outline form nearly one-third
of the extensive collection of Mr. Singer, which was formed for the
most part, as I have already mentioned, in the neighbourhood of that
town.
I now turn to the engraved designs that are found upon the bowls of
most of these eighteenth-century glasses. There is not much to be said
for the inventive powers or for the technical skill shown by the
engraver. Indeed, considering the general low level of the engraved
work, there is some temptation to find a Dutch or Flemish origin for
any specimen of engraving that shows superior technical or artistic
qualities; and there is little doubt that in the case of the earlier
pieces at least, such an attribution would be justified.[257]
The design that we find most frequently on our eighteenth-century
glasses is a rose branch with, on the opposite side, a butterfly. This
motive is found on the bell-shaped bowls of early glasses with
air-twisted stems. With certain modifications it continued long in use.
The rose, with the change of fashion after the middle of the century,
became more naturalistic, and the butterfly often takes the form of a
moth. Other designs have reference to the beverage destined to be drunk
from the glass: for wine-glasses, bunches of grapes and vine-leaves
(often accompanied by a humming-bird); ears of barley for beer-glasses;
and in the few rare cases where an apple-tree forms part of the design,
we may associate the glass with cider. The popular cries—‘No Excise,’
or ‘Wilkes and Liberty’ and ‘No. 45’—which are sometimes found on
glasses towards the middle of the century,[258] remind us of the new
fashion that came in about that time of finding in the decoration of
pottery or other ware an opportunity for political propaganda, and for
the glorification of the hero of the day. There was not much to be done
in this way on the restricted space at command on the bowls of our
glasses; towards the end of the century, however, naval emblems are
frequently to be found, and the Nelson glasses form a group by
themselves.
But of all the glasses that are thus ‘made to speak,’ to use the
expression of the great Napoleon, who had strong opinions as to the
advantages of this method of political _réclame_, the most interesting
class is formed by the treasured Jacobite glasses, bearing mottoes and
emblems of a more or less cryptic character, or, more rarely, portraits
of the young or the old Pretender engraved on the bowl.[259] The
extraordinary fascination exercised over some minds by what George
Borrow used to call ‘Charlie-over-the-waterism,’ is nowhere better
exhibited than in the almost devotional tone with which this subject is
approached by more than one of our authorities. The more important of
these glasses, especially the large ones with drawn stems, and those
with baluster or rather double-knopped stems, are probably of foreign
origin; at all events they were engraved in the north of France or in
the Low Countries. Of the rare examples with the head of the young
Pretender surrounded by a wreath of laurels, there are very few
specimens in our public museums: I can only call to mind a small glass
from the Schreiber collection at South Kensington and one or two
examples lately presented to the British Museum (Plate XLIV.). The most
frequent emblem is the rose with two buds, traditionally, I believe,
regarded as symbolical of James II. with his son and grandson, although
to one not in the inner circle of the cause the relation of the
equipoised buds to the central flower would seem rather to point to the
old Pretender and his two sons Charles Edward and Henry.[260]
As to the inscriptions on these glasses, we find in one instance four
stanzas from the Jacobite version of ‘God save the King’ engraved on
the bowl. But in most cases the allusion to the cause is of a more
disguised character. The commonest of all is the single word ‘FIAT,’
the motto of the Jacobite society known as the Cycle, which flourished
in the west of England during the greater part of the eighteenth
century.
I may note that among the Jacobite glasses treasured up in many an
old house in the west and north of England, one rarely comes across
any example that cannot be classed more or less accurately as a
wine-glass. Quite exceptional is the decanter engraved with a
circular compass-card pointing to a star, between oak leaves and
roses (Hartshorne, Plate 64). This decanter is one of a pair
preserved, along with as many as eleven of the above mentioned ‘Fiat’
glasses, in the early Jacobean house at Chastleton, on the borders of
Oxfordshire and Worcestershire.[261] Here also are many other pieces
of old English glass to more than one of which I have already
referred.
Although the history of English glass during the eighteenth
century—it would be more accurate perhaps to say from about 1670 to
1770—tends always to fall back upon the drinking-glass, yet during
that time the material was applied also to the manufacture of many
other objects. We find in the earlier records frequent reference to
large vessels of glass, blown or cast; this was indeed the case as
far back as the time when Chiddingfold was the centre of
glass-making. A favourite form at the end of the seventeenth
century—but here again a drinking-glass—was the ‘yard,’ an
exaggerated outgrowth of the Venetian or Low Country ‘flute.’ Thus
Evelyn, describing the ceremonies on the occasion of the proclamation
of James II., says that at Bromley the king’s health was ‘drunk in a
flint glasse of a yard long.’ Some time before this, in 1669, on the
occasion of a visit to the glass-house at Blackfriars, the same
writer mentions the ‘singing glasses’ that he there had made for him,
and which ‘make an echo to the voice ...’ but ‘were so thin that the
very breath broke one or two of them.’ At a later time trumpets were
made of glass, and some of these have survived.
But few examples, however, of what may be called miscellaneous glass of
an earlier date than the seventies of the eighteenth century have been
preserved. It was about this time that a great change must have come
over the manufacture, though on this point we have strangely little
direct information. This period, we know, was a critical one in the
history of the minor arts both in England and in France. In the latter
country, the simpler and more classical style associated with the reign
of Louis XVI. replaced the more unrestrained forms of the _Louis
Quinze_ period some years before the death of the latter king. In
England we see the new shapes first in the work of the silversmith
about the year 1770, and soon after they are well represented in the
Chelsea-Derby porcelain. In the case of glass this change is above all
to be associated with the increased use of facetting. Flat facets
divided by obtuse angles may indeed be found at times on the stems and
shoulders of drinking-glasses almost from the commencement of the
century. But now these facets take a purely geometrical form. The
dishes and basins of the time simply bristle with sharp-pointed
pyramids, so that these heavy, solid vessels can scarcely be lifted
with impunity.
Now for the first time full advantage was taken of the power possessed
by the heavy lead-glass of dispersing the rays of light, for only by
the use of these facets was the full fire of the glass developed. This
is indeed—so at least it seems to me—the one really important period
in the history of English glass. It was not long after this time,
towards the end of the century, that use was for the first time made of
machinery for driving the grinding-wheels. The glass, whose general
outline had been previously determined in the mould, was now quickly
channelled with intersecting furrows. There is at South Kensington a
small collection of the earlier facetted glass, presented by Mr. H. B.
Lennard, which contains some pieces of real artistic merit. This was
the period when the square plinth-like base was in fashion—not perhaps
in itself a very desirable form. In the Lennard collection are two
carved cups with these square feet: the bowl in each case is surrounded
by deeply cut gadroons curving as they descend; on other parts the
usual facets are found (Plate XLV. 1). There is a fine sculpturesque
feeling about the treatment of these standing cups that carries one
back to far earlier days—in fact I know of no other specimens of
English glass where such full advantage has been taken of the qualities
of the material, and this without any abuse or exaggeration.[262]
[Illustration:
_PLATE XLV_
STANDING CUP, WITH COVER, ON SQUARE FOOT
ENGLISH, END OF EIGHTEENTH CENTURY
BOWL ON SQUARE FOOT
ENGLISH, END OF EIGHTEENTH CENTURY]
But for the most part—above all after the end of the century—the
facetting runs wild; sometimes it covers the whole surface, and even
where there are no facets the ground is marked out by rectangular
divisions. The decoration as a whole is mechanically executed. But even
this machine-made work is better than the cheap imitations of later
days produced by pressing the glass into moulds of metal.
The cutting, or rather the grinding, of the glass was effected on a
cast-iron wheel. A number of these wheels were fixed on a horizontal
shaft; a workman seated in front of each held the glass against the
revolving face. The actual abrading in such a case is done by the
gritty particles of the sand, which mixed with water falls in a
continuous stream from the hopper above. After smoothing on a stone
wheel, the surface was polished on a wheel or ‘lap’ of willow-wood (or
sometimes of lead), first by means of pumice or rotten stone and then
with putty powder. Engraving, in the Bohemian or German sense, held a
subordinate position, and when made use of, for the better sort of work
at least, foreigners were generally employed. The outlines were then
cut by minute copper wheels with the aid of finely pulverised emery
powder mixed with oil, as in the case of the German glass.[263]
As I have said, it was above all this facetted ware—‘_l’article
Anglais, solide et comfortable mais sans élégance_,’ as a French writer
calls it—that spread the renown of English glass through the length
and breadth of Europe.
At that time the famous English flint-glass was made by mixing three
parts of pure sand, well washed and burned (from Alum Bay, Lynn, or
Reigate), with two parts of red lead or litharge and one part of
carbonate of potash. A small fraction of saltpetre and a little oxide
of manganese were subsequently added to cleanse the metal. The potash,
up to the middle of the last century, was introduced in the form of
pearl-ash imported from Canada or Russia, and the litharge came from
the refineries where silver was extracted from the native lead. In
fusing the glass, great importance was attached to the quick melting of
the materials at the full heat of the furnace, and to the subsequent
rapid working of the pot. Our English glass industry was nearly ruined
by the enormous excise duties, collected on the most arbitrary and
artificial system, to which it was subjected both before and after the
close of the great war. When on the repeal of these taxes the industry
‘rose from its ashes,’ it was conducted on a purely commercial basis.
I have already called attention to the important part played by Bristol
in the manufacture of glass during the eighteenth century. That town
obtained at this time a unique distinction in the history of English
glass, as the one spot where a distinct kind of ware—a special
_genre_—was made. It cannot be precisely stated when the opaque white
glass decorated with enamel colours was first made at Bristol; what
record we have does not take us further back than the latter half of
the eighteenth century. This glass was apparently very brittle, and
would not stand heat, a fact which may account for the few examples
that have survived. In general character the Bristol _lattimo_ closely
resembles the other imitations of porcelain made with glass, which were
so much in vogue at the beginning of the century. I have already
mentioned the opaque white glass of Orleans, of Barcelona, and of
Venice. Mr. Hugh Owen has collected at the end of his excellent work on
Bristol porcelain (_Two Centuries of Ceramic Art in Bristol_, 1873)
some curious information about this glass, from the account-book of a
local enameller, one Edkins. The ledger in question contains entries
from 1762 to 1787. According to an analysis made by Professor Church,
the opaque Bristol glass contains an exceptionally large quantity of
lead—as much as 44 per cent., it would seem—and, what is certainly
remarkable, less than one per cent. of tin. It is to this substance,
however, seeing that neither phosphate of lime nor arsenic[264] is
present, that we must attribute its opacity.
Mr. Owen thinks that in whiteness and in softness of texture this
Bristol ware exceeds all other opaque glasses of the kind, and comes
nearer than any of them in aspect to the soft-paste porcelain of the
day. According to the papers left by the above-mentioned Edkins, the
better kinds—these were above all tea-poys, enamel-painted in the
manner of the contemporary Bristol porcelain—were decorated in the
usual way with coloured fluxes melted on in the muffle-stove. But the
common articles ‘were simply painted with oil colours mixed with a
desiccator and dried hard by artificial heat.’[265]
In the Schreiber collection at South Kensington may be seen a pair of
candlesticks with twisted stems made of this white opaque Bristol
glass. They are well painted with flowers and butterflies on a white
chalky ground. At a later time some passable imitations of Venetian
glass decorated with white threads in a ruby ground were made at
Bristol, as well as bottles splashed with purple, black, and white,
after the manner of a French and Venetian ware of the seventeenth
century that has already been described. The glass-works at Nailsea,
nine miles south-west of Bristol, were established in 1788 and survived
to the middle of the last century. To the earlier years of these works
may be attributed some jugs of yellowish-green glass, with large
splashes of white, that turn up at times in the west of England.
James Tassie (born 1735), the Glasgow stonemason, applied the
experience he had gained in the modelling of portrait heads in wax to
the reproduction of antique gems in coloured pastes. The bright colours
of these compare unfavourably with the delicate hues of the glass
intaglios that have come down from classical times. But Tassie, both
James and his nephew William, also made portrait medallions of a
comparatively large size, using a nearly opaque glass paste or frit,
more or less resembling porcelain. This paste was formed, it is said,
of ‘a finely powdered glass and finely powdered pigments, annealed by
being placed in a reverbatory furnace.’ This is a substance of some
interest to us, and we may perhaps find in it points of resemblance to
the ‘_pâte de verre_’ employed lately by M. Henri Cros (see Chap.
XXII.).
I can only mention one other local variety of glass. In Ireland,
towards the end of the eighteenth century, more than one attempt was
made to encourage the manufacture. Some large fruit-dishes of heavy
cut-glass, and others in the form of open baskets adorned with
festoons, have been traced back to glass-houses established at
Waterford about the year 1780. This glass is distinguished by a more or
less faint blue tinge derived from a minute quantity of cobalt in the
‘metal.’ The gilding that was largely applied to these vessels was
burned in by means of borax, and where the gold has come away the
surface of the glass is rough and pitted.