Old Glass and How to Collect it

by J. Sydney Lewis

Evidently, therefore, the old Sussex industry had survived. The product of the Chiddingfold furnaces was probably, however, a coarse green glass, and by no means to be compared with the Venetian article.

In 1564 Cornelius de Lannoy, an alchemist from the Netherlands, came to England, at the invitation of the Government, to teach the art of glass-making as practised in the Low Countries. He took up his abode and set up his furnace in Somerset House. He failed, however, with the materials then available, to produce any very effective results; in particular, the clay used for the pots failed to withstand the great heat required to produce transparent glass. Moreover, de Lannoy proved to be more alchemist than glass-maker, and left various persons in England the poorer for their quest after the philosopher’s stone which they had undertaken under his guidance.

In 1567 Pierre Briet and Jean Carré sought a licence to make glass after the French fashion, and to teach to English craftsmen the art of its manufacture as practised in Lorraine and Normandy. Elizabeth, always with an eye to the main chance, made no difficulty and, joining forces with a rival licencee, Becker, set up in opposition to the English glass-makers in Sussex and later at Stourbridge and Newcastle. The fact that the native workers openly confessed their inability to compete with the French craftsmen did not prevent their stirring up a strong opposition against them, which found vent in popular tumult and, in at least one instance, in a conspiracy to murder the workers, pillage their stores and destroy their furnaces. There seems little doubt, however, that their presence must have influenced the quality of English glass and given an impetus to its manufacture. So did the advent of political and religious refugees from the Low Countries and from France, and also, though, of course, to a far greater degree, the influx of French artisans in the seventeenth century after the revocation of the famous Edict of Nantes. In spite of their efforts, however, it does not appear that the importation of fine Venetian glass was in any way checked; it continued, indeed, on an extensive scale for a long time after.

The most famous name in the history of Elizabethan glass manufacture is that of Jacob Verzelini, who came to London in 1575 and stayed for the remainder of his life—about thirty years. He obtained a patent giving him the monopoly of manufacturing glass after the Venetian style for twenty-one years. He set up his establishment in the hall of the Crutched Friars, where the eight Venetians had built their furnace in 1549, and there made “glass of divers sorts to drink in.” There is little doubt as to his success, although, with one possible exception, no tangible evidence of it remains. But if one may judge by the very considerable outcry that arose at this period against permitting foreigners to practise the art of glass-making to the detriment of native practitioners, he succeeded sufficiently well to arouse a strong feeling of jealousy. This was intensified by the traders who had hitherto sold imported Venetian glass, and the seamen who carried it in their vessels and who now saw their livelihood menaced.

The general public, too, showed itself greatly concerned over the great consumption of wood in the glass-houses. Indeed, during this period the wasting of the woods was a general complaint wherever furnaces were set up. So strong was this feeling, indeed, that in 1584 an act was passed against the making of glass by strangers and outlandish men and for the preservation of woods spoiled by glass-houses; and in 1589, the year after the Armada, it was proposed to reduce the number of glass-houses from fifteen to four, transferring the rest to Ireland, where the loss of trees did not matter so much, the timber not being urgently needed, as in England, for the purpose of shipbuilding. One curious fact is that for a long time—from the twelfth century at least in unbroken record—English window glass of a high order had been produced, as witness the windows of King’s College Chapel at Cambridge, which date from 1515-31; and it seems impossible to conceive that, with Venetian and Eastern glass to copy, the craftsmen who produced the windows should not have also turned their skill to the making of drinking vessels, particularly as the fashion for vessels of glass had strongly set in.

“It is a world to see in these our daies wherein gold and silver most aboundeth how that our gentilitie as lothing these mettals (because of the plentie) do now generalie choose rather the Venice glasses both for our wine and beere than anie of those mettals or stone wherein beforetime we have beene accustomed to drink....

“The poorest also will have glasse if they may but sith the Veneccian is somewhat too deere for them they content themselves with such as are made at home of ferne and burned stone, but in fine all go one way that is to shards at the last.”

On the other hand, when Sir Richard Mansel applied in 1624 for a patent to manufacture glass and to train Englishmen in the art, it was opposed, on the ground that fifty years before a similar patent had been granted to Jacob Verzelini and that it had been altogether neglected, and very few Englishmen had been brought up in the art. Mansel, in his reply, stated that he himself had brought many strangers from beyond seas to instruct his fellow-countrymen in making all sorts of glass, crystalline, Murano, spectacle glasses, and mirror plates.

I have stated these facts in the early history of English glass at some length not only for their intrinsic interest, but also to illustrate the curious fact that just as there is from Saxon times to 1550 a gap in the history of its manufacture, which no authenticated examples assist to fill, so from the accession of Queen Elizabeth to that of King Charles I. there exist to-day very few indisputable examples of the English glass-blower’s art of this period; and yet it is hardly possible to believe that they were not produced in considerable quantity. For, in spite of specimens bearing the Tudor rose—an ornament, by the way, largely employed at a later date—and of others with detailed and more or less accredited histories, “Elizabethan glass,” so glibly spoken of by some collectors, is chiefly conspicuous by its absence. Happy, therefore, the collector who acquires even a dubious example.

One famous specimen which may safely be assumed to be authentic is that from the British Museum Collection shown in Fig. 1. This drinking cup or goblet stands about 5¼ in. in height and bears the initials G. S.—probably those of the person for whom it was made—the date 1586, and the motto, “IN: GOD: IS: AL: MY: TRVST.” Experts generally concur in attributing it to Jacob Verzelini.