Waterford, Bristol, and Nailsea.
Among table sundries are glass salts and cruets; the latter, however, have been modernized and reduced in size, and the bottles and curiously shaped oil and vinegar cruets of a hundred or more years ago look quaint when compared with those of the present day. Even the flower vases which formerly adorned the table, and the more decorative dishes used for fancy sweetmeats and confections, have changed, leaving in the process many of the older pieces, relegated to the store-cupboard, where disused glass so often remains until in due time it is rescued from oblivion by the collector of household curios. Among the eighteenth-century cut glass jugs and trifle bowls are many beautiful vessels, for the making of which certain districts from time to time became famous. The old Waterford glass is especially noteworthy, and as a speculation, apart from the interest it possesses for collectors, is worth securing. Bristol glass to the uninitiated appears to be a misnomer, in that the beautiful white milk-like surface upon which so many exquisite floral designs have been painted looks more like egg-shell porcelain, but when held up to the light is found to be of glass-like nature, pellucid although semi-opaque.
Nailsea glass has many peculiar characteristics about it, notably the curiously introduced waved and twisted lines in colours. Many objects which were essentially curios, their utilitarian purposes having always been secondary, were made at Nailsea. There are gigantic models of tobacco pipes, formerly hung up against the walls as ornaments. As fitting companions to the pipes were walking-sticks of glass, some very remarkable designs which might at one time have been carried by the gallants of that day. They were often filled with sweetmeats and comfits, ornamented with bows of ribbon, and presented to ladies of their choice by devoted swains. A few of those curious sticks or shepherd's crooks, as they were called, are to be seen in most representative museum collections. The so-called rolling-pins of glass, made at Sunderland as well as at Nailsea and Bristol, were known as sailors' love tokens, and are referred to more fully in Chapter [XIII]. In the Taunton Castle Museum there are some interesting specimens of old glass, notably one of the very rare dark bottle-glass linen smoothers which came from South Petherton. Such smoothers were at one time favoured in the kitchen laundry in the days when servant-maids excelled in getting up linen, and prided themselves on the beautiful gloss they were able to impart—in the days before public laundries with their modern glossing machines were instituted.
Some of our readers may have seen the curious glass tubes, one yard in length, into which ale was poured in the days when it was considered a desirable attainment to be able to drink at one draught a "yard of ale."
Of the larger vessels such as wine bottles, the chief collectable feature about them is the old glass-bottle-makers' stamps, very frequently found on fragments of bottles, such stamps often turning up among the oddments of kitchen drawers which have probably been undisturbed for many years. To collect bottle stamps is certainly an uncommon hobby, but one that is not altogether devoid of interest.
Ornaments of Glass.
Of household ornaments in glass there appears to be no end. There are the glass Venetian vases and ewers, beautiful and graceful in form, richly ornamented in gold; and there are the old English and French vases, the colouring of which is not always in accord with modern taste. Cut glass, in whatever form it is met with, is appreciated, in that the workmanship involving so much studious labour is recognized. Continental glass has at all periods been imported into this country, and especially so Bohemian glass, of which there are decanters of ruby, claret, blue, and other rich colours; some remarkable effects have been produced upon red glass by adding tinted colours and white decoration interspersed with gold. Glass lustres have acquired an antiquarian value, and chandeliers and mantelpiece lustre candlesticks are sought after by the collector, who sometimes finds interspersed with cut glass lustre pretty coloured china droppers.
