"Rugged with excrescences and clouded with impurities') is a perfect word picture of what the first glass must have been. When and where the °shapeless lump') was first ob served, who were the first artificers employed in bringing it under control, and in what man ner a knowledge of its discovery and usefulness was first made known to the world may never be determined with certainty, but there is evi dence in historic record favoring a division of the honors, giving Egypt and the Egyptians the world's earliest craftsmen —credit for its invention and initial development, and ceding to the Phcenician merchants— the most notable among the ancients— the distribution of the knowledge of its existence, of its merits and possibilities.
Glass-blowing was practised by the Egyp tians more than 4,000 years ago, and while there are gaps in the records, we have proof of its continuance during the times of the native monarchs, under the Greeks and the Romans, and again in the 7th century A.D.
Phcenician claims to the invention of glass determine very early association with the art. During the three centuries on either side of the Christian era the Phcenician merchants did much toward the expansion of the industry. Glass found among the ruins of Mycenz sug gests association with the art among the Greeks about six centuries B.C.
The Roman glass-making period covered several centuries. In early Christian times glass was made in several Eastern countries, and Pliny mentions Gaul among the Western countries practicing the art. Byzantium had its glass workers. The earliest date of which there is documentary evidence of glass-making at Venice is 1090, but once well established, the industry held a foremost place for about five centuries, declining considerably under competi tion from western Europe in the 18th century. Though Venetian glass production was limited in volume during the 18th century, some very important work was accomplished toward ad vancing the art in the higher grades, and the foundation was laid for the revival which oc curred in the thirties of the following century, and has been maintained along the lines of some of its best features.
Western Europe advanced rapidly in the art of glass-making and decorating from the 16th century on; France, Spain, the Low Countries, Germany and the British Isles all contributing. Glass-making became an established industry in the United States early in the 17th century. Russia made considerable advance in the glass industry during the latter half of last century. Canada entered the field about half a century ago. India is now making glass for some of its own requirements; and there are indications that Japan is rapidly advancing in the manu facture of several varieties of glass production.
To a question as to the form in which glass has been longest in use, the answer would prob ably be, the bead. To follow the history of the bead the whole range of tradition and record of glass itself would have to be traversed. Beads of the native glass obsidian were in use in Egypt before the artificial substitute was discovered, and in every glass-making per iod since that discovery bead production has been continued. As glass itself resulted from the °fortuitous of two elements, so was the bead the fortuitous result of that liquefaction, and the initial action of the first molten glass was the automatic formation of a bead, without craftsmanship, without tool of any kind.
Beads were among the very first objects adopted as personal ornaments, and cherished as °charms," and scarcely any important dis covery of ancient glass has been made without beads formed some part of the find. Specimens made any time before 568 B.C. were discovered in the ruins of ancient Mycense. Fifth century history (B.c.) mentions °stony molten pendants" with which the ears of the sacred crocodiles of Egypt were adorned. Festoons of "bead-like gems° are mentioned in connection with glass of 300 B.C. The Phcenician and Roman glass makers made beads extensively. Glass beads of Egyptian characteristics were unearthed in 1892 during excavations at Glastonbury, England, where activities commenced about 150 &C. were ended prior to the period of the Roman con quest. (Consult Bulleid, A. and Gray, H. St.G., 'The Glastonbury Lake Village' (1911). Bead making was practised at Venice in its earliest glass-making days, was an important branch of the industry there in the 16th century, and by the end of the 18th over 20 furnaces were employed in producing over 500 species. To come nearer home there are records of bead production in the very earliest days of American glass-making viz., 1621, when a new glass house was built to accommodate Italian workmen — presumably Venetians — in making beads, °to trade with the Indians.' Such a valuable discovery as glass could not, in the hands of a clever race of craftsmen like the Egyptians, be long limited in its use to bead or pendant production. but the suggestion for bringing the material under control and making possible its develop ment would come from the material itself. In sufficiently fused glass always contains air-bub bles, and if taken from the melting pot in this condition and allowed to stream from the gathering instrument, the glass will continue to extend its length till it is chilled to hardness, the air bubble will remain a cavity, the end of the shaft or tube formed will be in bead or pendant form, and the hollow section of the shaft will he in form for division into lengths. Thus did the first glass bead get its perforation, and thus was suggested the blowing pipe, the essential for controlled expansion of molten glass. It is not outside the hounds of possi bility that a form of decorating solid glass preceded the art of glass blowing. The pre sumed earliest form of ornamentation was by a process of uniting particles of the molten material with the surface of a previously partly fashioned form, and then by the aid of certain instruments and processes so distribut this applied material as to form a pattern or imitation of something else than glass, some natural growth or chalcedonic marking. Ex amples of beads so decorated are known and with an antiquity attributed to them more re mote than that of the blown glass objects of similar characteristics there is ground for this argument. Glass workers of Egypt, Rome and Venice all produced ornamental effects by methods easily traceable to this primitive means of bringing molten glass under control. It possesses an advantage in being the most rapid of all the non-mechanical forms of patterning glass, the depositing movements being almost momentary.