The Drama of Glass

In every story told of the sights worth seeing at the Columbian Exposition the factory of the Libbey Glass Company, of Toledo, Ohio, has had an important part. It was more than a mere exhibit; it was a practical education in the art of glass making, which, like an easy lesson that follows step by step, from the mixing of the crude material to the completion of the finest piece of cut glass, impressed itself upon the minds of hundred of thousands of visitors.

Recall in your memory your visit to the World's Fair in 1893. Place yourself upon the Midway Plaisance, directly opposite the Woman's Building. Does your mind picture a stately, beautiful building, with central dome and graceful towers? This was the building of the glass factory to whom the exclusive right to manufacture and sell its products was awarded over many competitors by the Ways and Means Committee of the World's Columbian Exposition. This concession was given because the plan of the Libbey Glass Company was a plan of broad ideas, fully meeting the requirement that America should show that the whole world followed her in the manufacture of cut glass.

How well that Company fulfilled its mission is known to the two million visitors who passed under the deep-recessed semicircular archway, rich with sculptured ornament, that covered the grand entrance to this palace; within, it was like a theatre, where the scenes in the beautiful drama of glass were ever changing. Do you remember that the sides, the dome, the ceiling, were all glitter and sheen with the products of this mystic art, and that from thousands of cut-glass pieces, as from brilliant diamonds, sparkled the prismatic hues?

Do you remember the roaring furnace a hundred feet high, the melting pots made of the clays of the Old and the New Worlds, mixed by the bare feet in order that they have the requisite consistency? The products of this factory were born of fire. The plastic molten mass that came from the melting furnace, with its heat of 2200 degrees Fahrenheit, was thirty hours before a mixture called by glass makers a "batch," whose chief ingredient was sand from the hills of Massachusetts.

Did you watch the workmen – the "gatherer" and the "blower," with their long, hollow iron pipes? How the "blower," with his trained fingers, gave an easy, constantly swaying motion to the pipe, into which he blew and expanded the hot glass at its end? The tempering oven, through which all glass productions must pass before they will resist changes in temperature or even stand transportation? Did you follow the process of cutting glass; see the wheels like grindstones, driven by steam power? Wheels of stone that come from England and Scotland, and carry with them the old-country names of Yorkshire Flag, New Castle and Craigleith, stones that are very hard and close-grained, capable of retaining a very sharp edge? Wheels of iron, which are used to cut the design in the rough; wheels of wood, cork, felt, and revolving brush wheels, used in finishing and polishing? Did you know that the trained eye of the cutter and his experience were the only guides he had to secure the requisite depth to his cutting; that he must exercise great care and judgment, else the vibration of the glass renders it extremely liable to break, and that an intricate design requires many days of constant manipulation?

Did you watch with interest the making of glass cloth, see how the thread of glass was drawn out and wound on the big wheels that revolved hundreds of times a minute? How the glass thread was woven with the silk thread, producing a pliable glass cloth of soft sheen and lustre, that could be folded, pleated and handled in all ways like cloth?

Do you recall the Crystal Art Room? Did you realize that under that ceiling, bedecked with ten thousand dollars' worth of spun glass cloth, was collected the finest display of cut glass the world had ever seen? Do you remember an old glass punch bowl, used in 1840 by Henry Clay, and that near this relic of ancient glassware was another punch bowl upon which five hundred dollars' worth of labor had been bestowed?

Did you mark the difference, the deep and brilliant cuttings, how effective they were, how they brought out the beauty and richness of the design? Then, when you examined the hundreds of other articles, the sherbet and punch glasses in Roman shapes, the quaint decanters in Venetian forms, the celery trays, flower vases, and the ice-cream sets and cut-glass dishes for every use, you saw the clearness of the glass itself, and that this deep and brilliant cutting of perfect design, that brought out the beauties of the great punch bowl, was a marked characteristic of the Libbey Cut Glass. Did you not, as an American, feel proud of the progress that your countrymen had made in this old art of glass making?