In two instances, the letter N has been printedwith a macron above it. This has been represented as [=N].
Some presumed printer's errors have been corrected. These are listed in a second transcriber's noteat the end of the text.
GLASS
The Connoisseur’s Library
PREFACE
It is now nearly thirty years since the late Mr.Nesbitt wrote the introduction to the catalogueof the glass at South Kensington. Some yearspreviously the description of the glass in the Sladecollection had been intrusted to the same gentleman.Since that time many works treating of special departmentsof the history of glass have been published inFrance, in Germany, and in Italy. Much fresh light hasbeen thrown upon the primitive glass of the Egyptians;our knowledge of the glass of both the Near and the FarEast has been revolutionised; abundant fresh materialhas been provided for the history of Byzantine glass, andthe wanderings of the glass-workers from L’Altare andMurano have been traced in full detail. Mr. Hartshorne,in his Old English Glasses, has exhaustively told thestory of our native glass from the documentary side, andhas described with the minutest detail the wine-glasses ofthe eighteenth century. Apart, however, from the introductorychapters of the last work, I know of no attemptof recent years to give a general account of the history ofglass—using that term in the narrower sense—as viewedfrom the artistic side.
We have at hand in the British Museum a collectionof glass that has no rival elsewhere; only second to it isthe collection at South Kensington. It is in these collectionsthat the history of glass must be studied. I havefrom time to time in the following pages called attentionto the most remarkable examples. I hope that what Ihave said may assist the student in threading his waythrough what is a rather complicated history.
viMy best thanks are due to Mr. C. H. Read, who hascharge of the glass in the British Museum, for the facilitiesthat he has afforded me in the photographing of the