Round-about Rambles in Lands of Fact and Fancy Part 28

These curious formations, some of which appear like stars, others like very simple blossoms, while others are very complex; and some of which take the form of fern-leaves, are caused to appear in the centre of a block of ice by means of concentrated rays of lights which are directed through the ice by means of mirrors and lenses. Sometimes they are observed by means of a magnifying-gla.s.s, and in other experiments their images are thrown upon a white screen.

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We may consider these ice-flowers as very beautiful and very wonderful, but they are not a whit more so than our little blossoms of the apple-orchard.

The latter are more common, and have to produce apples, while the ice-flowers are uncommon, and of no possible use.

That is the difference between them.

ABOUT GLa.s.s.

Gla.s.s is so common and so cheap that we never think of being grateful for it. But if we had lived a few centuries ago, when the richest people had only wooden shutters to their windows, which, of course, had to be closed whenever it was cold or stormy, making the house as dark as night, and had then been placed in a house lighted by gla.s.s windows, we would scarcely have found words to express our thankfulness. It would have been like taking a man out of a dreary prison and setting him in the bright world of G.o.d's blessed suns.h.i.+ne.

After a time men made small windows of stones that were partly transparent; and then they used skins prepared something like parchment, and finally they used sashes similar to ours, but in them they put oiled paper. And when at last gla.s.s came into use, it was so costly that very few were able to buy it, and they had it taken out of the windows and stored carefully away when they went on a journey, as people now store away pictures and silver-plate.

Now, when a boy wants a clear, white gla.s.s vial for any purpose, he can buy it for five cents; and for a few pennies a little girl can buy a large box of colored beads that will make her a necklace to go several times around her neck, and bracelets besides. These her elder sister regards with contempt; but there was a time when queens were proud to wear such. The oldest article of gla.s.s manufacture in existence is a bead. It has an inscription on it, but the writing, instead of being in letters, is in tiny little pictures.

Here you see the bead, and the funny little pictures on it. The pictures mean this: "The good Queen Ramaka, the loved of Athor, protectress of Thebes." This Queen Ramaka was the wife of a king who reigned in Thebes more than three thousand years ago, which is certainly a very long time for a little gla.s.s bead to remain unbroken!

The great city of Thebes, where it was made, has been in ruins for hundreds of years. No doubt this bead was part of a necklace that Queen Ramaka wore, and esteemed as highly as ladies now value their rubies. It was found in the ruins of Thebes by an Englishman.

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It may be thought that this bead contradicts what has been said about there being a time when gla.s.s was unknown, and that time only a few centuries ago. But it is a singular fact that a nation will perfectly understand some art or manufacture that seems absolutely necessary to men's comfort and convenience, and yet this art in time will be completely lost, and things that were in common use will pa.s.s as completely out of existence as if they had never been, until, in after ages, some of them will be found among the ruins of cities and in old tombs. In this way we have found out that ancient nations knew how to make a great many things that enabled them to live as comfortably and luxuriously as we do now. But these things seem to have perished with the nations who used them, and for centuries people lived comfortlessly without them, until, in comparatively modern times, they have all been revived.

Gla.s.s-making is one of these arts. It was known in the early ages of the world's history. There are pictures that were painted on tombs two thousand years before Christ's birth which represent men blowing gla.s.s, pretty much as it is done now, while others are taking pots of it out of the furnaces in a melted state. But in those days it was probably costly, and not in common use; but the rich had gla.s.s until the first century after Christ, when it disappeared, and the art of making it was lost.

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The city of Venice was founded in the fifth century, and here we find that gla.s.s-making had been revived. You will see by this picture of a Venetian bottle how well they succeeded in the manufacture of gla.s.s articles.

Venice soon became celebrated for this manufacture, and was for a long time the only place where gla.s.s was made. The manufacturers took great pains to keep their art a secret from other nations, and so did the government, because they were all growing rich from the money it brought into the city.

In almost any part of the world to which you may chance to go you will find Silica. You may not know it by that name, but it is that s.h.i.+ning, flinty substance you see in sand and rock-crystal. It is found in a very great number of things besides these two, but these are the most common.

Lime is also found everywhere--in earth, in stones, in vegetables and bones, and hundreds of other substances.

Soda is a common article, and is very easily produced by artificial means. Potash, which has the same properties as soda, exists in all ashes.

Now silica, and lime, and soda, or potash, when melted together, form gla.s.s. So you see that the materials for making this substance which adds so much to our comfort and pleasure are freely given to all countries. And after Venice had set the example, other nations turned their attention to the study of gla.s.s-making, and soon found out this fact, in spite of the secrecy of the Venetians. After a time the Germans began to manufacture gla.s.s; and then the Bohemians. The latter invented engraving on gla.s.s, which art had also been known to the ancients, and then been lost. They also learned to color gla.s.s so brilliantly that Bohemian gla.s.s became more fas.h.i.+onable than Venetian, and has been highly thought of down to the present day.

On the next page we see an immense drinking-gla.s.s of German manufacture, but this one was made many years after gla.s.s-making was first started there.

This great goblet, which it takes several bottles of wine to fill, was pa.s.sed around at the end of a feast, and every guest was expected to take a sip out of it. This was a very social way of drinking, but I think on the whole it is just as well that it has gone out of fas.h.i.+on.

The old Egyptians made gla.s.s bottles, and so did the early Romans, and used them just as we do for a very great variety of things. Their wine-bottles were of gla.s.s, sealed and labelled like ours. We might suppose that, having once had them, people would never be without gla.s.s bottles. But history tells a different story. There evidently came a time when gla.s.s bottles vanished from the face of the earth; for we read of wooden bottles and those of goat-skin and leather, but there is no mention of gla.s.s. And men were satisfied with these clumsy contrivances, because in process of time it had been forgotten that any other were ever made.

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Hundreds of years rolled away, and then, behold! gla.s.s bottles appeared again. Now there is such a demand for them that one country alone--France--makes sixty thousand tons of bottles every year. To make bottle-gla.s.s, oxide of iron and alumina is added to the silica, lime, and soda. It seems scarcely possible that these few common substances melted over the fire and blown with the breath can be formed into a material as thin and gossamer, almost, as a spider's web, and made to a.s.sume such a graceful shape as this jug.

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This is how gla.s.s bottles, vases, etc., are made. When the substances mentioned above are melted together properly, a man dips a long, hollow iron tube into a pot filled with the boiling liquid gla.s.s, and takes up a little on the end of it. This he pa.s.ses quickly to another man, who dips it once more, and, having twirled the tube around so as to lengthen the gla.s.s ball at the end, gives it to a third man, who places this gla.s.s ball in an earthen mould, and blows into the other end of the tube, and soon the shapeless ma.s.s of gla.s.s becomes a bottle. But it is not quite finished, for the bottom has to be completed, and the neck to have the gla.s.s band put around it. The bottom is finished by pressing it with a cone-shaped instrument as soon as it comes out of the mould. A thick gla.s.s thread is wound around the neck. And, if a name is to be put on, fresh gla.s.s is added to the side, and stamped with a seal.

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This is also the process of making the beautiful jug just mentioned, except that three workmen are engaged at the same time on the three parts--one blows the vase itself, another the foot, and the third the handle. They are then fastened together, and the top cut into the desired shape with shears, for gla.s.s can be easily cut when in a soft state.

You see how clearly and brightly, and yet with what softness, the windows of the room are reflected in that exquisite jug It was made only a few years ago.

I will now show you an old Venetian goblet, but you will have to handle it very carefully, or you will certainly break off one of the delicate leaves, or snap the stem of that curious flower.

Such gla.s.ses as these were certainly never intended for use. They were probably put upon the table as ornaments. The bowl is a white gla.s.s cup, with wavy lines of light blue. The spiral stem is red and white, and has projecting from it five leaves of yellow gla.s.s, separated in the middle by another leaf of a deep blue color. The large flower has six pale-blue petals.

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And now we will look at some goblets intended for use. They are of modern manufacture, and are plain and simple, but have a beauty of their own. The right-hand one is of a very graceful shape, and the one in the middle is odd-looking, and ingeniously made with rollers, and all of them have a transparent clearness, and are almost as thin as the fragile soap-bubbles that children blow out of pipe-bowls. They do not look unlike these, and one can easily fancy that, like them, they will melt into air at a touch.

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Because the ancients by some means discovered that the union of silica, lime, and soda made a perfectly transparent and hard substance it by no means follows that they knew how to make looking-gla.s.ses For this requires something behind the gla.s.s to throw back the image. But vanity is not of modern invention, and people having from the beginning of time had a desire to look at themselves, they were not slow in providing the means.

The first mirrors used were of polished metal, and for ages n.o.body knew of anything better. But there came a time when the idea entered the mind of man that "gla.s.s lined with a sheet of metal will give back the image presented to it," for these are the exact words of a writer who lived four centuries before Christ. And you may be sure that gla.s.s-makers took advantage of this suggestion, if they had not already found out the fact for themselves. So we know that the ancients did make gla.s.s mirrors. It is matter of history that looking-gla.s.ses were made in the first century of the Christian era, but whether quicksilver was poured upon the back, as it is now, or whether some other metal was used, we do not know.

But these mirrors disappeared with the bottles and other gla.s.s articles; and metal mirrors again became the fas.h.i.+on. For fourteen hundred years we hear nothing of looking-gla.s.ses, and then we find them in Venice, at the time that city had the monopoly of the gla.s.s trade. Metal mirrors were soon thrown aside, for the images in them were very imperfect compared with the others.

These Venetian gla.s.ses were all small, because at that time sheet gla.s.s was blown by the mouth of man, like bottles, vases, etc., and therefore it was impossible to make them large. Two hundred years afterward, a Frenchman discovered a method of making sheet gla.s.s by machinery, which is called _founding_, and by this process it can be made of any size.

But even after the comparatively cheap process of founding came into use, looking-gla.s.ses were very expensive, and happy was the rich family that possessed one. A French countess sold a farm to buy a mirror! Queens had theirs ornamented in the most costly manner. Here is a picture of one that belonged to a queen of France, the frame of which is entirely composed of precious stones.

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I have told you how the Venetians kept gla.s.s-making a secret, and how, at last, the Germans learned it, and then the French, and their work came to be better liked than that of the Venetians. But these last still managed to keep the process of making mirrors a profound secret, and the French were determined to get at the mystery. Several young gla.s.s-makers went from France to Venice, and applied to all the looking-gla.s.s makers of Venice for situations as workmen, that they might learn the art. But all positively refused to receive them, and kept their doors and windows tightly closed while they were at work, that no one might see what they did. The young Frenchmen took advantage of this, and climbed up on the roofs, and cautiously made holes through which they could look; and thus they learned the carefully-kept secret, and went back to France and commenced the manufacture of gla.s.s mirrors. Twenty years after, a Frenchman invented founding gla.s.s, which gave France such a great advantage that the trade of Venice in looking-gla.s.ses was ruined.

You would be very much interested in watching this process of founding gla.s.s. This is the way it is done. As soon as the gla.s.s is melted to the proper consistency, the furnaces are opened, and the pots are lifted into the air by machinery, and pa.s.sed along a beam to an immense table of cast iron. A signal is given, and the brilliant, transparent liquid gla.s.s falls out and spreads over the table. At a second signal a roller is pa.s.sed by machinery over the red-hot gla.s.s, and twenty men stand ready with long shovels to push the sheet of gla.s.s into an oven, not very hot, where it can slowly cool. When taken out of the oven the gla.s.s is thick, and not perfectly smooth, and it has to be rubbed with sand, imbedded in plaster of Paris, smoothed with emery, and polished by rubbing it with a woollen cloth covered with red oxide of iron, all of which is done by machinery.

We know that cut gla.s.s is expensive, and the reason is that cutting it is a slow process. Four wheels have to be used in succession, iron, sandstone, wood, and cork. Sand is thrown upon these wheels in such a way that the gla.s.s is finely and delicately cut. But this is imitated in pressed gla.s.s, which is blown in a mould inside of which the design is cut. This is much cheaper than the cut gla.s.s.

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A higher art than cutting is engraving on gla.s.s, by which the figures are brought out in relief. Distinguished artists are employed to draw the designs, and then skilful engravers follow the lines with their delicate tools. If you will examine carefully the engraving on this Bohemian goblet, you will see what a wonderful piece of workmans.h.i.+p it is.

It seems almost a pity that so much time and labor, skill and genius should be given to a thing so easily broken. And yet we have seen that a good many gla.s.s articles have been preserved for centuries. The engraving on the Bohemian goblet is ingenious, and curious, and faithful in detail, but the flowers on this modern French flagon are really more graceful and beautiful.

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