CHAPTER XIX
ENGLISH GLASS OF THE SIXTEENTH AND SEVENTEENTH CENTURIES
In an English work treating of glass, or rather of certain descriptions of glass, and that chiefly from the artistic point of view, what position in the book and what relative amount of space should be given to the glass of England?
The position is, indeed, readily defined, for our country has but slight claims to recognition as a producer of artistic glass until the commencement of the eighteenth century—indeed we may perhaps say until that century was well advanced. The consideration, then, of the glass of this country must be kept back until that of all the other European States—Italy, France, Spain, Germany, and the Netherlands—that have at one time or another produced glass of artistic importance has been dealt with.
As to the relative importance of our English glass and the amount of space to be allotted to it, this is a question difficult to answer. For a moment, no doubt, towards the end of the eighteenth century, it held the premier place in Europe, on the ground, above all, of the excellence of the material. Advantage was taken of certain exceptional qualities in the English flint or lead glass to produce a deeply cut, facetted ware, solid and brilliant, something undoubtedly sui generis and suitable to its place on the sideboard, or on the well-polished mahogany table when the cloth was removed. The flashing fire of the lights cast back from the skilfully arranged facets of the decanters and glasses, combined with the softer reflections from the silver plate to give an undeniable charm and an individual stamp to these late Georgian dinner-tables. This play of lights has appealed to, and has been not unsuccessfully reproduced by, more than one painter of the present day. But this facetted ware, the one glory of our English glass, came late into vogue, at a time when the prevailing fashions allowed little room for any freedom of treatment, so that it is only rarely that we can find any merit in the forms and decorations of individual examples.
It is, however, to a somewhat earlier period that the modern enthusiast turns. His interest lies in the air-twisted stems, the folded feet, and the bell-shaped bowls of the drinking-glasses of the eighteenth century. Now these, though made of flint glass, belong mostly to a time before full advantage had been taken of the dispersive power of that material upon the rays of light. Here the question may well be asked—putting aside all matter of historical or sentimental interest—what can we say of these endless rows of glasses, classified and sub-classified on the ground of variety of stem or bowl, as objects of art? But this is a point upon which I should prefer not to deliver a definite judgment; I have said enough to indicate my personal standpoint. I can only refer the reader to the copiously illustrated work of Mr. Hartshorne on English glass, of which the larger part is occupied with this branch of the subject.[[228]]
It may be said that the history of English glass divides itself into two periods. For the first we have abundant documentary evidence—patents for new processes and petitions for or against these patents, to say nothing of notices in contemporary journals and memoirs—but against this an almost total absence of examples of the glass actually made. This period extends from the early days of Elizabeth almost to the end of the seventeenth century. In the second period, on the other hand—and this includes nearly the whole of the eighteenth century—the documentary evidence almost completely fails us; but in its place a fairly rich material harvest is available—the wine-glass, above all, so dear to the collector, now asserts itself.
When at the beginning of the reign of Elizabeth, or even a little earlier, a few rays of light begin to be thrown upon the glass made in England, we find the industry centred in a district on the borders of Surrey and Sussex: we are here at the western extremity of the great forest of the Weald, that was a little later to become for a time the home of an important iron industry. Here the raw materials and the fuel were at hand. Fuel from the oaks and beeches, and from trees of smaller growth; the silica from the ‘Hastings sands,’ selected from spots where the beds were tolerably free from iron; and finally the alkali, for the most part from the ashes of the bracken that then as now grew so abundantly in the glades of the woods. For this old English glass, like that of France, was essentially a verre à fougère,[[229]] made in districts remote from towns. At a somewhat later time the glass-workers were indeed forbidden to set up their furnaces within twenty-two miles of London, seven miles of Guildford, or within four miles ‘of the foot of the hills called the Sussex downs.’
The little village of Chiddingfold, just within the boundary of Surrey, may perhaps lay claim to be the original ‘metropolis of English glass,’ and a line measured from Hindhead to Petworth passes close to the various places—Loxwood, Kirdford, Fernfold, Wisboro’ Green—where we know that furnaces were already established early in the sixteenth century. I have already referred to this district when speaking of the English glass of mediæval times (see p. [139]). Fragments of green glass have been found on the site of a glass-house at Chiddingfold. In the Museum at Lewes are two bulbous flasks with long necks of this green Weald-glass. There was another centre of the glass industry in East Sussex, in the country to the north of Hastings. In a mediæval document concerning Beckley, in this district, the name Glassye Borough occurs. At these woodland glass-houses, for many generations, the wandering pedlars, the ‘glass-men,’ had been wont to renew the stock of ‘vrynells, bottles, bowles, cuppis to drinck and such lyke,’ that they hawked along the country-side. You may send, says Thomas Charnock in his Breviary of Philosophy (1557), to Chiddingfold, to the ‘glassemaker,’
‘And desire him in most humble wise
To blow thee a glass after thy devise.’