Once possessed of these receipts he published and sold them for a large sum, then turning on the man he had betrayed he demanded faithless Marietta in marriage. Thus it came to pass that the ignoble love of a weak woman for a dishonorable man helped to change the fortunes of Venice. The world gained by the destruction of a monopoly, one more proof of the poet's dictum that "all partial evil is universal good."
It was in the middle of this same fifteenth century that a number of Venetian glass makers were imprisoned in London because they could not pay the heavy fine imposed by the Venetian Council for plying their art in foreign lands. "Let us work out our fine," pleaded these victims of prohibition. Their prayer was warmly seconded by England's king, whose intercession was by no means disinterested. Yielding to royal desire, Venice freed these artisans, and thus glass making was established in Great Britain. Beyond the point of reason all prohibitory laws fail sooner or later. Go to the bottom of slang, and as a rule you will find it based on rugged truth. When in the breezy vernacular of this republic a human being is credited with "sand" or is accused of being entirely destitute of it, he rises to high esteem or falls beneath contempt. Possessing "sand" he can command success; without it he is a poor creature. For the origin of this slang we turn to glass making, the excellence of which depends upon sand.
If Bohemia succeeded finally in making clearer and whiter glass than Venice, it was because Bohemia produced better sand. When the town of Murano furnished the world with glass, its population was thirty thousand. That number has dwindled to four thousand. Bohemian glass stood unrivaled until England discovered flint or lead glass; now, the world looks to the United States for rich cut glass, the highest artistic expression of modern glass.
Where does America begin its evolution in glass? Before the landing of the Pilgrims at Plymouth Rock. In 1608, within a mile of the English settlement of Jamestown, Virginia, a glass house was built in the woods. Curiously enough it was the first factory built upon this continent. This factory began with bottles, and bottles were the first manufactured articles that were exported from North America.
In those early days glass beads were in great demand. Indians would sell their birthright for a mess of them, so when the first glass house fell to pieces, a second took its place for the purpose of supplying the Indians with beads.
A few years later common glass was made in Massachusetts. It appears from the records of the town of Salem that the glass makers could not have been very successful, as that town loaned them thirty pounds in money which was never paid back.
During the time of the Dutch occupation of Manhattan Island, when New York was known as New Amsterdam, a glass factory was built near Hanover Square, but not until after the Revolution came and went did glass making really take root in American soil. In July, 1787, the Massachusetts Legislature gave to a Boston glass company the exclusive right to make glass in that State for fifteen years. This company prospered and was the first successful glass manufacturing company in the United States. Then followed others that were successful. As early as 1865 there was manufactured, in the vicinity of Boston, glass that was the equal of the best flint glass manufactured in England. Two hundred and fifty years from the time the first rough bottles were exported from Virginia to England seems a long time to us, but how short a time it really is in the life of this ancient art—this drama of glass.