
Up: Glassmaking

Reminiscences 32 of 123
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variation. France monopolized the manufacture over one hundred years
before it was introduced into any other country.
Writers generally agree that the manufacture of
glass was introduced into England in the year 1557.
"Friars' Hall," as stated by one
writer, was converted into a manufactory of window-glass,-- other writers
say, for crystal glass, (called by the English "flint," from the fact of
the use of flint-stones, which, by great labor, they burnt and ground.)
In 1575, Friars' Hall Glass-Works, with forty thousand billets of wood,
were destroyed by fire.
In 1635, seventy-eight years after the art was
introduced into England, Sir Robert Mansell
introduced the use of coal fuel instead of wood, and obtained from
the English government the monopoly of importing the fine Venetian
drinking-glasses, an evidence that the art in England was confined as yet
to the coarser articles. Indeed, it was not until the reign of William
III. that the art of making Venetian drinking-vessels was brought into
perfection,-- quite a century after the art was introduced into England;
an evidence of the slow progress made by the art in that country.
As France was indebted to Venice for her
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