REMINISCENCES OF GLASS-MAKING.
BY
DEMING JARVES.
SECOND EDITION, ENLARGED.
NEW YORK:
PUBLISHED BY HURD AND HOUGHTON,
401 Broadway, cor. Walker Street.
1865.
Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1865, by
Deming Jarves,
in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District ofMassachusetts.
RIVERSIDE, CAMBRIDGE:
PRINTED BY H. O. HOUGHTON AND COMPANY.
PREFACE.
The articles upon the history and progress of Glass Manufacture hereinpresented to the public were originally published in the columns of avillage newspaper.
They are the result of investigation upon these topics made in the fewleisure moments gained from the engrossing cares of business, andconsequently make no pretension to anything of literary character orexecution.
The object of the writer has been to gather, in a condensed form,whatever of interesting information could be gained from authenticsources, in regard to a branch of manufacture which has attained aposition among the useful and elegant arts scarcely rivalled by anyother of those which mark and distinguish the progressive character ofour country.
It is believed that they present, in a condensed and convenient form,much valuable information, useful alike for reference and instruction.Aside from historical or mechanical facts, there is much of romanticinterest attaching to the progress of this department of art. Thepartiality of friends interested in the topics herein presented, ratherthan his own opinion of their value, has induced the writer to presentthe articles in a more permanent form.
Boston, March 17, 1854.
The above was the Preface to a small pamphlet in 8vo. of the"Reminiscences of Glass-making," printed for private circulation in1854, and now enlarged into a more permanent form, and brought down tothe present year, in order to meet the demand for information which hasunexpectedly sprung up from those interested in the manufacture ofGlass in America.
Boston, January, 1865.
REMINISCENCES OF GLASS-MAKING.
It may be safely asserted that no department of art has, from itsearliest period, attracted so much attention and investigation, noneinvolved so extensive a range of inquiry, or been productive of moreingenious, interesting, and beautiful results, than the manufacture ofglass.
The question of the origin of glass goes back to the remotestantiquity, and is involved in almost entire obscurity. All that modernwriters on the subject are enabled to do, is to glean hints andindistinct statements in reference to the subject, from the very briefand unsatisfactory accounts of the ancients. These, however, throw buta feeble light upon the precise point of the origin of the manufacture;and little is proved beyond the fact of its great antiquity.
That the subject held a very prominent place in the technologicalliterature of the ancients is clearly proved; Pliny, Theophrastus,Strabo, Petronius Arbiter, Berzelias, Neri, Merrit, Runket, and others,