Part 1 (2/2)
Possessing ”sand” he can command success; without it he is a poor creature. For the origin of this slang we turn to gla.s.s making, the excellence of which depends upon sand.
If Bohemia succeeded finally in making clearer and whiter gla.s.s than Venice, it was because Bohemia produced better sand. When the town of Murano furnished the world with gla.s.s, its population was thirty thousand. That number has dwindled to four thousand. Bohemian gla.s.s stood unrivaled until England discovered flint or lead gla.s.s; now, the world looks to the United States for rich cut gla.s.s, the highest artistic expression of modern gla.s.s.
Where does America begin its evolution in gla.s.s? Before the landing of the Pilgrims at Plymouth Rock. In 1608, within a mile of the English settlement of Jamestown, Virginia, a gla.s.s 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 gla.s.s beads were in great demand. Indians would sell their birthright for a mess of them, so when the first gla.s.s house fell to pieces, a second took its place for the purpose of supplying the Indians with beads.
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A few years later common gla.s.s was made in Ma.s.sachusetts. It appears from the records of the town of Salem that the gla.s.s 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 gla.s.s factory was built near Hanover Square, but not until after the Revolution came and went did gla.s.s making really take root in American soil. In July, 1787, the Ma.s.sachusetts Legislature gave to a Boston gla.s.s company the exclusive right to make gla.s.s in that State for fifteen years. This company prospered and was the first successful gla.s.s manufacturing company in the United States. Then followed others that were successful. As early as 1865 there was manufactured, in the vicinity of Boston, gla.s.s that was the equal of the best flint gla.s.s 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 gla.s.s.
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FROM 1850 TO 1893
AN EVOLUTION IN GLa.s.s
It is always interesting to trace the history of a great industry. Like the oak, it begins with a small seed that hardly knows its own mind, and is often more surprised than the rest of the world at the result of earnest effort. See what apothecaries did for Italy. Mediaeval art and the Medicis go hand in hand. The drama of gla.s.s in the United States may have as significant a mission, for it is singularly true that James Jackson Jarves, son of Deming Jarves, the pioneer gla.s.s manufacturer of New England, was almost the first American to give his life to the study of old masters and to devote his fortune to collecting their works. The Jarves gallery now belongs to Yale University.
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William L. Libbey was born in Portsmouth, New Hamps.h.i.+re, and became, in 1850, the confidential clerk of Jarves & Commeraiss, the greatest gla.s.s importers of Boston, and whose gla.s.s factory in South Boston was the forerunner of the Libbey Works of the Columbian Exposition. Having made a fortune--the fortune his clever son spent in art and _bric-a-brac_--Deming Jarves sold his gla.s.s factory to his trusted clerk in 1855, and for twenty years this Ma.s.sachusetts industry gained strength and reputation. But the trend of population was westward.
Cheap fuel was necessary to successful gla.s.s making. How could New England coal compete with natural gas? So Ohio came to the front. A few years ago Ohio's natural gas became exhausted. Without a day's disturbance petroleum succeeded gas, and better gla.s.s was made than ever, because oil produces a more even temperature. Verily ”there is a soul of goodness in things evil.” From Ma.s.sachusetts to Ohio, from coal to gas, from gas to petroleum, what would be the next act in the drama of American gla.s.s? What, indeed, but an act the scene of which was laid in the grounds of the World's Fair!
Believing fully in the westward course of empire, Mr. Edward D. Libbey had the inspiration that if Chicago wanted the World's Fair, Chicago would not only have it, but would create such an exposition as had never been seen. So before even the temporary organization was formed in Chicago the Libbey Gla.s.s Company filed an application for the exclusive right to manufacture gla.s.s at the Columbian Exposition.
The problem of erecting a building that should be architecturally in keeping with the surroundings, that should afford every possible comfort to the thousands of daily visitors and still be used as a manufactory, was not an easy matter.
Begun in October, 1892, the admirable building, put up in the Midway Plaisance to show the process of making gla.s.s, was finished one week before May 1st following. On that bleak opening day thousands of overshoes were stalled in mud a foot deep before the Administration Building, and the owners went home in some cases almost barefooted.
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But there was an expenditure of $125,000 in an idea, and the investors had no reason to fear weather or neglect. From the opening to the closing of the big front door two million people found their way to this gla.s.s house, at which no one threw stones. The trouble was not to get people in, but to keep them out. A mob never benefits itself nor anybody else. To reduce the attendance to reasonable proportions a fee was charged, applicable to the purchase of some souvenir, made perhaps before the buyer's very eyes. Why was this gla.s.s house so popular?
Because its exhibit displayed the only art industry in actual operation within the Fair grounds.
All people like machinery in motion, and the most curious people on earth are Americans. They want to know how things are made, and, like children, are not content until they have laid their hands on whatever confronts them. ”Please do not touch” has no terrors for them. In addition to this inborn love of action, there is a fascination about gla.s.s blowing and the fas.h.i.+oning of shapeless matter piping hot from the pot that appeals to men and women of all sorts and conditions. With eyes and mouths wide open, thousands stood daily around the circular factory watching a hundred skilled artisans at work. They looked at the big central furnace, in which sand, oxide of lead, potash, saltpetre and nitrate of soda underwent vitrification; they saw it taken out of the pot a plastic ma.s.s, which, through long, hollow iron tubes, was blown and rolled and twisted and turned into things of beauty. Here was a champagne gla.s.s, there was a flower bowl; now came a decanter, followed by a jewel basket. A few minutes later jugs and goblets and vases galore pa.s.sed from the nimble fingers of the artisans to the annealing oven below.
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