History of glass - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

The history of glassmaking can be traced back to 3500 BCE in Mesopotamia

Mesopotamia

Mesopotamia is a toponym for the area of the Tigris–Euphrates river system, largely corresponding to modern-day Iraq, northeastern Syria, southeastern Turkey and southwestern Iran.Widely considered to be the cradle of civilization, Bronze Age Mesopotamia included Sumer and the...

Origins of glass making

Naturally occurring glass

Glass

Glass is an amorphous solid material. Glasses are typically brittle and optically transparent.The most familiar type of glass, used for centuries in windows and drinking vessels, is soda-lime glass, composed of about 75% silica plus Na2O, CaO, and several minor additives...

, especially the volcanic glass obsidian

Obsidian

Obsidian is a naturally occurring volcanic glass formed as an extrusive igneous rock.It is produced when felsic lava extruded from a volcano cools rapidly with minimum crystal growth...

, has been used by many Stone Age

Stone Age

The Stone Age is a broad prehistoric period, lasting about 2.5 million years , during which humans and their predecessor species in the genus Homo, as well as the earlier partly contemporary genera Australopithecus and Paranthropus, widely used exclusively stone as their hard material in the...

societies across the globe for the production of sharp cutting tools and, due to its limited source areas, was extensively traded. But in general, archaeological evidence suggests that the first true glass was made in coastal north Syria, Mesopotamia

Mesopotamia

or Old Kingdom Egypt. Because of Egypt's favorable environment for preservation, the majority of well-studied early glass is found there, although some of this is likely to have been imported. The earliest known glass objects, of the mid third millennium BCE, were beads, perhaps initially created as accidental by-products of metal-working

Metalworking

Metalworking is the process of working with metals to create individual parts, assemblies, or large scale structures. The term covers a wide range of work from large ships and bridges to precise engine parts and delicate jewelry. It therefore includes a correspondingly wide range of skills,...

(slag

Slag

Slag is a partially vitreous by-product of smelting ore to separate the metal fraction from the unwanted fraction. It can usually be considered to be a mixture of metal oxides and silicon dioxide. However, slags can contain metal sulfides and metal atoms in the elemental form...

s) or during the production of faience

Egyptian faience

Egyptian faience is a non-clay based ceramic displaying surface vitrification which creates a bright lustre of various blue-green colours. Having not been made from clay it is often not classed as pottery. It is called "Egyptian faience" to distinguish it from faience, the tin glazed pottery...

, a pre-glass vitreous material made by a process similar to glazing.

During the Late Bronze Age in Egypt

Egypt

Egypt , officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, Arabic: , is a country mainly in North Africa, with the Sinai Peninsula forming a land bridge in Southwest Asia. Egypt is thus a transcontinental country, and a major power in Africa, the Mediterranean Basin, the Middle East and the Muslim world...

(e.g., the Ahhotep "Treasure"

Ahhotep I

Ahhotep I , was an Ancient Egyptian queen who lived circa 1560- 1530 BC, during the end of the Seventeenth dynasty of ancient Egypt, she was the daughter of Queen Tetisheri and Senakhtenre Tao I, and was likely the sister, as well as the wife, of pharaoh Seqenenre Tao...

) and Western Asia (e.g. Megiddo) there was a rapid growth in glass-making technology. Archaeological finds from this period include colored glass ingots, vessels (often colored and shaped in imitation of highly prized hardstone carvings in semi-precious stones

Gemstone

A gemstone or gem is a piece of mineral, which, in cut and polished form, is used to make jewelry or other adornments...

) and the ubiquitous beads. The alkali of Syrian and Egyptian glass was soda ash, sodium carbonate, which can be extracted from the ashes of many plants, notably halophile

Halophile

Halophiles are extremophile organisms that thrive in environments with very high concentrations of salt. The name comes from the Greek for "salt-loving". While the term is perhaps most often applied to some halophiles classified into the Archaea domain, there are also bacterial halophiles and some...

seashore plants: (see saltwort

Saltwort

Saltwort is a common name for several genera of flowering plants, including:*Batis, family Bataceae*Salicornia and Salsola, family Amaranthaceae*Salsola kali, prickly saltwort...

). The earliest vessels were 'core-wound', produced by winding a ductile rope of glass round a shaped core of sand and clay over a metal rod, then fusing it with repeated reheatings. Threads of thin glass of different colors made with admixtures of oxides were subsequently wound around these to create patterns, which could be drawn into festoons by using metal raking tools. The vessel would then be rolled flat ('marvered') on a slab in order to press the decorative threads into its body. Handles and feet were applied separately. The rod was subsequently allowed to cool as the glass slowly annealed

Annealing (glass)

Annealing is a process of slowly cooling glass to relieve internal stresses after it was formed. The process may be carried out in a temperature-controlled kiln known as a Lehr. Glass which has not been annealed is liable to crack or shatter when subjected to a relatively small temperature change...

and was eventually removed from the center of the vessel, after which the core material was scraped out. Glass shapes for inlay

Inlay

Inlay is a decorative technique of inserting pieces of contrasting, often coloured materials into depressions in a base object to form patterns or pictures that normally are flush with the matrix. In a wood matrix, inlays commonly use wood veneers, but other materials like shells, mother-of-pearl,...

s were also often created in moulds. Much early glass production, however, relied on grinding techniques borrowed from stone working. This meant that the glass was ground and carved in a cold state.

By the 15th century BCE extensive glass production was occurring in Western Asia, Crete

Crete

Crete is the largest and most populous of the Greek islands, the fifth largest island in the Mediterranean Sea, and one of the thirteen administrative regions of Greece. It forms a significant part of the economy and cultural heritage of Greece while retaining its own local cultural traits...

and Egypt

Egypt

and the Mycenaean Greek term ku-wa-no-wo-ko meaning "worker of lapis lazuli and glass" (written in Linear b

Linear B

Linear B is a syllabic script that was used for writing Mycenaean Greek, an early form of Greek. It pre-dated the Greek alphabet by several centuries and seems to have died out with the fall of Mycenaean civilization...

syllabic script) is attested. It is thought the techniques and recipes required for the initial fusing of glass from raw materials was a closely guarded technological secret reserved for the large palace industries of powerful states. Glass workers in other areas therefore relied on imports of pre-formed glass, often in the form of cast ingots such as those found on the Ulu Burun shipwreck off the coast of modern Turkey.

Glass remained a luxury material, and the disasters that overtook Late Bronze Age civilizations seem to have brought glass-making to a halt. It picked up again in its former sites, in Syria and Cyprus, in the 9th century BCE, when the techniques for making colorless glass were discovered. The first glassmaking "manual" dates back to ca. 650 BCE. Instructions on how to make glass are contained in cuneiform tablets discovered in the library of the Assyrian king Ashurbanipal

Ashurbanipal

Ashurbanipal |Ashur]] is creator of an heir"; 685 BC – c. 627 BC), also spelled Assurbanipal or Ashshurbanipal, was an Assyrian king, the son of Esarhaddon and the last great king of the Neo-Assyrian Empire...

. In Egypt glass-making did not revive until it was reintroduced in Ptolemaic Alexandria

Ptolemaic Egypt

Ptolemaic Egypt began when Ptolemy I Soter invaded Egypt and declared himself Pharaoh of Egypt in 305 BC and ended with the death of queen Cleopatra VII of Egypt and the Roman conquest in 30 BC. The Ptolemaic Kingdom was a powerful Hellenistic state, extending from southern Syria in the east, to...

. Core-formed vessels and beads were still widely produced, but other techniques came to the fore with experimentation and technological advancements. During the Hellenistic period many new techniques of glass production were introduced and glass began to be used to make larger pieces, notably table wares. Techniques developed during this period include 'slumping' viscous (but not fully molten) glass over a mould in order to form a dish and 'millefiori

Millefiori

Millefiori is a glasswork technique which produces distinctive decorative patterns on glassware.The term millefiori is a combination of the Italian words "mille" and "fiori" . Apsley Pellatt was the first to use the term "millefiori", which appeared in the Oxford Dictionary in 1849...

' (meaning 'thousand flowers') technique, where canes of multi-colored glass were sliced and the slices arranged together and fused in a mould to create a mosaic-like effect. It was also during this period that colorless or decolored glass began to be prized and methods for achieving this effect were investigated more fully.

According to Pliny the Elder

Pliny the Elder

Gaius Plinius Secundus , better known as Pliny the Elder, was a Roman author, naturalist, and natural philosopher, as well as naval and army commander of the early Roman Empire, and personal friend of the emperor Vespasian...

, Phoenicia

Phoenicia

Phoenicia , was an ancient civilization in Canaan which covered most of the western, coastal part of the Fertile Crescent. Several major Phoenician cities were built on the coastline of the Mediterranean. It was an enterprising maritime trading culture that spread across the Mediterranean from 1550...

n traders were the first to stumble upon glass manufacturing techniques at the site of the Belus River

Belus River

Belus or Belos is a small river in north-western Israel, where according to legend, mentioned by Isidore of Seville in his glass-making was invented.This river is identified with what is now called the Na'aman River , near Acre.Pliny the Elder Belus or Belos is a small river in north-western...

. Georgius Agricola, in De re metallica
De re metallica
De re metallica is a book cataloguing the state of the art of mining, refining, and smelting metals, published in 1556. The author was Georg Bauer, whose pen name was the Latinized Georgius Agricola...

, reported a traditional serendipitous "discovery" tale of familiar type:

"The tradition is that a merchant ship laden with nitrum being moored at this place, the merchants were preparing their meal on the beach, and not having stones to prop up their pots, they used lumps of nitrum from the ship, which fused and mixed with the sands of the shore, and there flowed streams of a new translucent liquid, and thus was the origin of glass."

This account is more a reflection of Roman experience of glass production, however, as white silica sand from this area was used in the production of glass within the Roman Empire due to its low impurity levels.

During the 1st century BCE glass blowing was discovered on the Syro-Palestinian coast, revolutionising the industry. Glass vessels were now inexpensive compared to pottery vessels. The conquest of Judea by the Romans in 63 BCE paved the way for the growth of the use of glass products that occurred throughout the Roman world. Glass became the Roman plastic, and glass containers produced in Judea and by the Jewish population in Alexandria spread throughout the Roman Empire. With the discovery of clear glass (through the introduction of manganese dioxide), by the Jewish glass blowers in Alexandria ca. 100　CE, the Romans began to use glass for architectural purposes. Cast glass windows, albeit with poor optical qualities, began to appear in the most important buildings in Rome and the most luxurious villas of Herculaneum

Herculaneum

Herculaneum was an ancient Roman town destroyed by volcanic pyroclastic flows in AD 79, located in the territory of the current commune of Ercolano, in the Italian region of Campania in the shadow of Mt...

and Pompeii

Pompeii

The city of Pompeii is a partially buried Roman town-city near modern Naples in the Italian region of Campania, in the territory of the comune of Pompei. Along with Herculaneum, Pompeii was destroyed and completely buried during a long catastrophic eruption of the volcano Mount Vesuvius spanning...

. Over the next 1,000 years glass making and working continued and spread through southern Europe and beyond.

India (Hindu Kingdoms)

Indigenous development of glass technology in South Asia

South Asia

South Asia, also known as Southern Asia, is the southern region of the Asian continent, which comprises the sub-Himalayan countries and, for some authorities , also includes the adjoining countries to the west and the east...

may have begun in 1730 BCE. Evidence of this culture includes a red-brown glass bead along with a hoard of beads dating to that period, making it the earliest attested glass from the Indus Valley

Indus Valley Civilization

The Indus Valley Civilization was a Bronze Age civilization that was located in the northwestern region of the Indian subcontinent, consisting of what is now mainly modern-day Pakistan and northwest India...

locations. Glass discovered from later sites dating from 600–300 BCE displays common color.

Chalcolithic evidence of glass has been found in Hastinapur, India

India

India , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world...

.
Some of the texts which mention glass in India are the Shatapatha Brahmana
Shatapatha Brahmana
The Shatapatha Brahmana is one of the prose texts describing the Vedic ritual, associated with the Shukla Yajurveda. It survives in two recensions, Madhyandina and Kanva , with the former having the eponymous 100 adhyayas,7624 kandikas in 14 books, and the latter 104 adhyayas,6806 kandikas in 17...

and Vinaya Pitaka
Vinaya Pitaka
The ' is a Buddhist scripture, one of the three parts that make up the Tripitaka. Its primary subject matter is the monastic rules for monks and nuns...

. However, the first unmistakable evidence in large quantities, dating from the 3rd century BCE, has been uncovered from the archaeological site

Archaeological site

An archaeological site is a place in which evidence of past activity is preserved , and which has been, or may be, investigated using the discipline of archaeology and represents a part of the archaeological record.Beyond this, the definition and geographical extent of a 'site' can vary widely,...

in Takshashila, ancient India

India

.

By the 1st century CE, glass was being used for ornaments and casing in South Asia. Contact with the Greco-Roman world

Greco-Roman world

The Greco-Roman world, Greco-Roman culture, or the term Greco-Roman , when used as an adjective, as understood by modern scholars and writers, refers to those geographical regions and countries that culturally were directly, protractedly and intimately influenced by the language, culture,...

added newer techniques, and Indians artisans mastered several techniques of glass molding, decorating and coloring by the succeeding centuries. The Satavahana

Satavahana

The Sātavāhana Empire or Andhra Empire, was a royal Indian dynasty based from Dharanikota and Amaravati in Andhra Pradesh as well as Junnar and Prathisthan in Maharashtra. The territory of the empire covered much of India from 230 BCE onward...

period of India also produced short cylinders of composite glass, including those displaying a lemon yellow matrix covered with green glass.

Romans

Glass objects have been recovered across the Roman Empire

Roman Empire

The Roman Empire was the post-Republican period of the ancient Roman civilization, characterised by an autocratic form of government and large territorial holdings in Europe and around the Mediterranean....

in domestic, industrial and funerary contexts. Glass

Glass

was used primarily for the production of vessels, although mosaic tiles and window glass were also produced. Roman glass production developed from Hellenistic

Hellenistic period

The Hellenistic period or Hellenistic era describes the time which followed the conquests of Alexander the Great. It was so named by the historian J. G. Droysen. During this time, Greek cultural influence and power was at its zenith in Europe and Asia...

technical traditions, initially concentrating on the production of intensely colored cast glass vessels. However, during the 1st century CE the industry underwent rapid technical growth that saw the introduction of glass blowing and the dominance of colorless or ‘aqua’ glasses. Production of raw glass was undertaken in geographically separate locations to the working of glass into finished vessels, and by the end of the 1st century CE large scale manufacturing, primarily in Judea and by the Jewish population of Alexandria, resulted in the establishment of glass as a commonly available material in the Roman world.

Anglo-Saxon world

Anglo-Saxon glass has been found across England during archaeological excavations of both settlement and cemetery sites. Glass in the Anglo-Saxon period

History of Anglo-Saxon England

Anglo-Saxon England refers to the period of the history of that part of Britain, that became known as England, lasting from the end of Roman occupation and establishment of Anglo-Saxon kingdoms in the 5th century until the Norman conquest of England in 1066 by William the Conqueror...

was used in the manufacture of a range of objects including vessels, beads, windows and was even used in jewelry. In the 5th century CE with the Roman departure from Britain, there were also considerable changes in the usage of glass. Excavation of Romano-British

Roman Britain

Roman Britain was the part of the island of Great Britain controlled by the Roman Empire from AD 43 until ca. AD 410.The Romans referred to the imperial province as Britannia, which eventually comprised all of the island of Great Britain south of the fluid frontier with Caledonia...

sites have revealed plentiful amounts of glass but, in contrast, the amount recovered from 5th century and later Anglo-Saxon sites is minuscule. The majority of complete vessels and assemblages of beads come from the excavations of early Anglo-Saxon cemeteries, but a change in burial rites in the late 7th century affected the recovery of glass, as Christian Anglo-Saxons were buried with fewer grave goods, and glass is rarely found. From the late 7th century onwards, window glass is found more frequently. This is directly related to the introduction of Christianity

Christianity

Christianity is a monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus as presented in canonical gospels and other New Testament writings...

and the construction of churches and monasteries. There are a few Anglo-Saxon ecclesiastical literary sources that mention the production and use of glass, although these relate to window glass used in ecclesiastical buildings. Glass was also used by the Anglo-Saxons in their jewelry, both as enamel or as cut glass insets.

Arab world

The Arab poet

Arabic poetry

Arabic poetry is the earliest form of Arabic literature. Present knowledge of poetry in Arabic dates from the 6th century, but oral poetry is believed to predate that. Arabic poetry is categorized into two main types, rhymed, or measured, and prose, with the former greatly preceding the latter...

al-Buhturi

Buhturi

Buhturi , Arabic, أبو الوليد بن عبيدالله البحتري التنوخي was an Arab poet born at Hierapolis Bambyce in Syria, between Aleppo and the Euphrates...

(820–897) described the clarity of such glass,
"Its color hides the glass as if it is standing in it without a container."

In the 8th century, the Persian

Persian people

The Persian people are part of the Iranian peoples who speak the modern Persian language and closely akin Iranian dialects and languages. The origin of the ethnic Iranian/Persian peoples are traced to the Ancient Iranian peoples, who were part of the ancient Indo-Iranians and themselves part of...

chemist Jābir ibn Hayyān (Geber) described 46 recipes for producing colored glass in Kitab al-Durra al-Maknuna (The Book of the Hidden Pearl), in addition to 12 recipes inserted by al-Marrakishi in a later edition of the book. By the 11th century, clear glass mirror

Mirror

A mirror is an object that reflects light or sound in a way that preserves much of its original quality prior to its contact with the mirror. Some mirrors also filter out some wavelengths, while preserving other wavelengths in the reflection...

s were being produced in Arab Islamic Spain

Al-Andalus

Al-Andalus was the Arabic name given to a nation and territorial region also commonly referred to as Moorish Iberia. The name describes parts of the Iberian Peninsula and Septimania governed by Muslims , at various times in the period between 711 and 1492, although the territorial boundaries...

Medieval Europe

Glass objects from the 7th and 8th centuries have been found on the island of Torcello

Torcello

Torcello is a quiet and sparsely populated island at the northern end of the Venetian Lagoon. It is considered the oldest continuously populated region of Venice, and once held the largest population of the Republic of Venice.-History:...

near Venice

Venice

Venice is a city in northern Italy which is renowned for the beauty of its setting, its architecture and its artworks. It is the capital of the Veneto region...

. These form an important link between Roman times and the later importance of that city in the production of the material. Around 1000 CE, an important technical breakthrough was made in Northern Europe when soda glass, produced from white pebbles and burnt vegetation was replaced by glass made from a much more readily available material: potash

Potash

Potash is the common name for various mined and manufactured salts that contain potassium in water-soluble form. In some rare cases, potash can be formed with traces of organic materials such as plant remains, and this was the major historical source for it before the industrial era...

obtained from wood ashes. From this point on, northern glass differed significantly from that made in the Mediterranean area, where soda remained in common use.

Until the 12th century, stained glass

Stained glass

The term stained glass can refer to coloured glass as a material or to works produced from it. Throughout its thousand-year history, the term has been applied almost exclusively to the windows of churches and other significant buildings...

– glass to which metallic or other impurities had been added for coloring – was not widely used, but it rapidly became an important medium for Romanesque art

Romanesque art

Romanesque art refers to the art of Western Europe from approximately 1000 AD to the rise of the Gothic style in the 13th century, or later, depending on region. The preceding period is increasingly known as the Pre-Romanesque...

and especially Gothic art

Gothic art

Gothic art was a Medieval art movement that developed in France out of Romanesque art in the mid-12th century, led by the concurrent development of Gothic architecture. It spread to all of Western Europe, but took over art more completely north of the Alps, never quite effacing more classical...

. Almost all survivals are in church buildings, but it was also used in grand secular buildings.

The 11th century saw the emergence in Germany

Germany

Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...

of new ways of making sheet glass by blowing spheres. The spheres were swung out to form cylinders and then cut while still hot, after which the sheets were flattened. This technique was perfected in 13th century Venice

Venice

Venice is a city in northern Italy which is renowned for the beauty of its setting, its architecture and its artworks. It is the capital of the Veneto region...

.

The Crown glass process was used up to the mid-19th century. In this process, the glassblower would spin approximately 9 pounds

Avoirdupois

The avoirdupois system is a system of weights based on a pound of 16 ounces. It is the everyday system of weight used in the United States and is still widely used to varying degrees by many people in Canada, the United Kingdom, and some other former British colonies despite the official adoption...

(4 kg) of molten glass at the end of a rod until it flattened into a disk approximately 5 feet (1.5 m) in diameter. The disk would then be cut into panes.

Domestic glass vessels in late medieval Northern Europe are known as Forest glass

Forest glass

The term Forest glass or the German name Waldglas is given to late Medieval glass produced in North-Western Europe from about 1000-1700 AD using wood ash and sand as the main raw materials and made in factories known as glass-houses in forest areas...

Murano glassmaking

The center for luxury Italian glassmaking from the 14th century was the island of Murano

Murano

Murano is a series of islands linked by bridges in the Venetian Lagoon, northern Italy. It lies about 1.5 km north of Venice and measures about across with a population of just over 5,000 . It is famous for its glass making, particularly lampworking...

, which developed many new techniques and became the center of a lucrative export trade in dinnerware, mirror

Mirror

s, and other items. What made Venetian Murano glass

Murano glass

Murano glass is a famous product of the Venetian island of Murano. Located off the shore of Venice, Italy, Murano has been a commercial port as far back as the 7th century. By the 10th century, the city had become well known for its glassmakers, who created unique Murano glass...

significantly different was that the local quartz pebbles were almost pure silica, and were ground into a fine clear sand that was combined with soda ash obtained from the Levant

Levant

The Levant or ) is the geographic region and culture zone of the "eastern Mediterranean littoral between Anatolia and Egypt" . The Levant includes most of modern Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Israel, the Palestinian territories, and sometimes parts of Turkey and Iraq, and corresponds roughly to the...

, for which the Venetians held the sole monopoly

Monopoly

A monopoly exists when a specific person or enterprise is the only supplier of a particular commodity...

. The clearest and finest glass is tinted in two ways: firstly, a natural coloring agent is ground and melted with the glass. Many of these coloring agents still exist today; for a list of coloring agents, see below. Black glass was called obsidianus after obsidian stone. A second method is apparently to produce a black glass which, when held to the light, will show the true color that this glass will give to another glass when used as a dye.

The Venetian ability to produce this superior form of glass resulted in a trade advantage over other glass producing lands. Murano

Murano

’s reputation as a center for glassmaking was born when the Venetian Republic, fearing fire might burn down the city’s mostly wood buildings, ordered glassmakers to move their foundries to Murano in 1291. Murano's glassmakers were soon the island’s most prominent citizens. Glassmakers were not allowed to leave the Republic. Many took a risk and set up glass furnaces in surrounding cities and as far afield as England and the Netherlands.

United States

Evidence has been found of glassmaking at the English settlement on Jamestown Island, Virginia. Whle some glass window panes were made there after 1608, most of the windows had been shipped from England.

The glassmaking business in America started when eight Germans (known as "Dutchmen") and Poles arrived as part of the Second supply onboard the Mary and Margaret. They used local material: sand in the James River, potash was in the forest and a bed of endless oyster shells which could be burned and ground to make lime. They set up making the first batches of goods exported to England from the New World. The first shipment sent to England was called the trial glass. Most of it was window glass, bottles, vials and plain drinking glasses. The glass factory at Jamestown was believed to be the first manufactory in America.

The Glass House Point

The location was near the Jamestown peninsula over a mile from the fort, in a location that was convenient for glassblowing. The Jamestown Glasshouse

Jamestown Glasshouse

The Jamestown Glasshouse is located in Jamestown, Virginia about 1 mile from Jamestown Island, location of the first permanent English settlement, and is a part of the Colonial National Historical Park....

was situated where the Indians used to camp and where the main roads converged, known to the settlers as the Greate Road. The area came to be called Glass House Point

Glass House Point

Glass House Point in James City County, Virginia is the northern terminus of the Jamestown Ferry, which was relocated there as part of the development of Jamestown for the celebration the 350th anniversary in 1957...

. Though this location made the recovery of mineral resources easily accessible, it also made the glassmakers vulnerable to Indian sneak attacks. The glass manufactory was controlled exclusively by the Polish glassmakers. The Dutchmen went to Werowocomoco

Werowocomoco

Werowocomoco was a village that served as the political center of the Powhatan Paramount Chiefdom, a grouping of about 30 Virginia Indian tribes speaking an Algonquian language...

(an Indian village on the York River fifteen miles from Jamestown) in order to build a house for the Indian chief, and plotted to kill Captain John Smith and steal powders and arms from the settlers. They didn’t succeed, and were kicked out of the village when the Powhatan

Powhatan

The Powhatan is the name of a Virginia Indian confederation of tribes. It is estimated that there were about 14,000–21,000 of these native Powhatan people in eastern Virginia when the English settled Jamestown in 1607...

Chief became suspicions of their dealings.

Glass Production

The glassmaking operation required three furnaces with different sizes. The first furnace was for melting the glass, the smaller one for annealing or cooling the finished glass. And an even smaller fritting furnace for preheating the ingredients needed for making the glass. A fourth furnace was erected to fire up the clay pots used in the glassmaking process. The construction of the furnaces was made up of huge boulders rolled out of the river and glued together with mud. A rectangular wood-frame building was constructed to protect the furnaces and the workers from the weather. Overall the glass house was about thirty seven feet wide by fifty feet long, and probably had a high thatched roof and partially open sides with the office situated next to the furnaces. (Kelso 2006)

Evidence of glass making

During an excavation in 1948, an archaeologist, Jean Carl Harrington excavating the foundation of the furnaces, theorized that the workmen probably produced a lot of green glass. It was comparable to that produced in England; exhibit showcases, window panes, bottles and drinking vessels. Glass making in the colonies was discontinued in 1609 during the Starving Time. When British settlers first came to the colonies, they were unaccustomed to the land and the weather, and everything was trial and error or success as the case may be. They tried, and with some luck, grew some crops. But unfortunately during Indian attacks, many were killed, some of the injured died due to lack of medical facilities. The Virginia Company Charter expected returns; however since the glass making business was in decline, they ventured to other manufactories. (The name Glass house point was not the original name given to the manufactory. It was merely known as the Glass House then).

American glass

Glass making in America symbolized wealth. Ivor Noel Hume excavated in Virginia and found one fragment of a piece of glass. Most glass was utilitarian with a case of glasses in the parlor quite common. Over 70 percent of Hume’s find were fragments of quatre foil- stemmed glasses. Round bottles assumed a more squat shape. Glass was not universal in most households. Even those of wealth had no glass at all. According to his records, a Ralph Fisbourn died in Chester, Pennsylvania in 1708 with an estate of £1,762 and had no glass except for some bottles. (Edgar 1980)
American glass manufactories were founded first in New York in 1732 and then in South Jersey by Caspar Wistar in 1739. The 1730s saw an increasing proliferation of forms. Boston merchants advertised wine glasses, jelly glasses, syllabubs, decanters, sugar pots, barrel cans, punch bowls, bird fountains, and candlesticks. Merchants also offered japanned glassware. “For those who did buy taste in the newest styles, drinking glasses were the inverted baluster type (popular in England from 1720 to about 1735) or the later drawn stem glass (1730-1745)” . Both types have been found in Virginia. Wealth and fashion did not dictate an elaborate collection of glass, for the Reverend Ebenezer Thayer who died in nearby Roxbury less than a year later had £137 worth of silver. But his only glass was some salts in the parlor.

Style

The style of glassmaking changed by 1746 when the government passed The Glass Excise Bill, which taxed glass by weight; beginning in 1751 advertisements in Boston newspaper made a reference to “new fashion” glass. Usually the phrase referred to the air twist stemmed glass or “wormed wine glasses” that had first been advertised in the Boston market in 1746. By 1761, glasses and decanters were also engraved or “flowered”. Glassmakers worked diligently to provide special glasses for specific purposes, and inevitably only the well-to-do could afford a full array of forms. The inventory of Governor Fauquier’s glass is revealing, when the former Governor of Virginia died in 1768, he left: 5 beer glasses, 5 champagne glasses, 14 water glasses, 55 wine glasses, 59 syllabub glasses, 69 jelly glasses, 23 glass salvers, 15 decanters and 8 cruets. He also had three sets of salvers that made up into large pyramids; the largest pyramid was valued at £15. Such pyramids were advertised in the Boston press in 1772.
During the Federal Period, after the revolution Americans adopted new European styles. During the Revolutionary period, decoration was minimal. Although the American glass industry was making a strong beginning, considerable quantities were still imported. Cut glass was advertised in Baltimore as early as 1786, gaining popularity toward the end of the period. American production of blown three-mold glass began during the War of 1812. Glassmakers Henry William Stiegel and John Frederick Amelung had both tried to produce elaborate, fine table glass rivaling the European imports and both failed because there was not yet a market for the work they produced.

English and European influences

Many of the glassmakers who worked in American factories were from England and their designs bore a resemblance to that of European designs. European cut glass influenced the patterns of American cut glass until 1880. Phillip McDonald designed the “Russian” pattern for T.G. Hawkes & Company of Corning. New York and from this point on American cut glass wares became richer in design, and quality of both workmanship and glass. John S. O’ Connor’s “Parisian” pattern were the first cut glass designs to utilize a curved line in cutting, and it greatly influenced the American designs thereafter, because most of the cutting had been straight lines.

Glass manufactures across the mid colonies

Since the war of 1812 had stopped the importation of fine cut glass from abroad, the American factories progressed in the making of flint glass. Flint glass manufacture was common in South Boston. In South Boston, there was the South Boston Crown Glass Company, Boston, Massachusetts. The New England Glass Company

New England Glass Company

The New England Glass Company of Cambridge, Massachusetts, was established by "Amos Binney, Edmund Munroe, Daniel Hastings, and Deming Jarves ... on February 16, 1818. It produced both blown and pressed glass objects in a variety of ... colors, which had engraved, cut, etched, and gilded decorations...

was created in ca.1817. Most workers that started as glass makers in a company set off to start their own business in no time. The Glassmaking business was risky as it often failed within a few years of establishment. It often ran into labor or financial trouble, which resulted in being sold.
For instance, the Bay State Glass Company started in East Cambridge Massachusetts in 1857; it advertised cut flint glass ware in all its varieties along with other glass wares. It also quoted engraving done in neatness. But the firm dissolved in 1863. The Boston and Sandwich Glass Company in Sandwich Massachusetts produced a considerable quantity of fine cut glassware after 1825 and closed in 1888. This was due to the civil war. In Connecticut, it wasn’t different either. Parker and Casper in 1867 operated a glass cutting shop in Meriden Connecticut and manufactured decanters, caster bottles, sugar, salt and mustard glass liners, until the shop closed in 1869.
From South Boston, Connecticut, New York, Pennsylvania to Ohio for many years, the American glass industry engraved, invented, and adopted brilliant designs for glass making in America. It has progressed through decades of new innovations and art forms in the country.

Chronology of advances to production methods

1226 – "Broad Sheet" first produced in Sussex
1330 – "Crown Glass" first produced in Rouen
Rouen
Rouen , in northern France on the River Seine, is the capital of the Haute-Normandie region and the historic capital city of Normandy. Once one of the largest and most prosperous cities of medieval Europe , it was the seat of the Exchequer of Normandy in the Middle Ages...

, France. "Broad Sheet" also produced. Both were also supplied for export
1620 – "Blown Plate" first produced in London. Used for mirrors and coach plates.
1678 – "Crown Glass" first produced in London. This process dominated until the 19th century
1688 – "Polished Plate" first produced in France (cast then hand polished)
1773 – "Polished Plate" adopted by English at Ravenshead. By 1800 a steam engine was used to carry out the grinding and polishing process
1834 – "Improved Cylinder Sheet" introduced by Robert Lucas Chance
Robert Lucas Chance
Robert Lucas Chance , was the fifth child and eldest son of William Chance and Sarah Lucas . He was always known as Lucas Chance.-Working life:...

, based on a German process of partial remelting of cut glass cylinders. This type of glass was used to glaze the The Crystal Palace
The Crystal Palace
The Crystal Palace was a cast-iron and glass building originally erected in Hyde Park, London, England, to house the Great Exhibition of 1851. More than 14,000 exhibitors from around the world gathered in the Palace's of exhibition space to display examples of the latest technology developed in...

of the Great Exhibition. The process was common until WW1.
1843 – An early form of "Float Glass" invented by Henry Bessemer
Henry Bessemer
Sir Henry Bessemer was an English engineer, inventor, and businessman. Bessemer's name is chiefly known in connection with the Bessemer process for the manufacture of steel.-Anthony Bessemer:...

, pouring glass onto liquid tin. Expensive and not a commercial success.
1847 – "Rolled Plate" introduced by James Hartley. This allowed a ribbed finish. This type of glass was often used for extensive glass roofs such as within railway stations
1888 – "Machine Rolled" glass introduced allowing patterns to be introduced
1898 – "Wired Cast" glass invented by Pilkington for use where safety or security was an issue. This is commonly given the misnomer "Georgian Wired Glass" but greatly post-dates the Georgian era.
1903 – "Machine Drawn Cylinder" technique invented in USA. Manufactured under licence in UK by Pilkington from 1910 until 1933.
1913 – "Flat Drawn Sheet" technique developed in Belgium. First produced under licence in UK in 1919 in Kent
1923 – "Polished Plate" first appeared in UK. Commonly used for large panes such as on shopfronts.
1938 – "Polished Plate" process improved by Pilkington, incorporating a double grinding process to give an improved quality of finish
1959 – "Float Glass" launched in UK. Invented by Sir Alistair Pilkington.

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