Page:Once a Week Volume 8.djvu/382

374 inches in diameter—and that is the largest size made—must necessarily retain the unsightly bull’s-eye. So, to overcome the difficulty, another method has been adopted. Instead of blowing the bubbles round, they are blown long, and, both ends being cut off, the tube is ripped open, and laid flat by heat.

Having followed one sheet of glass from the melting-pot to perfection, we may now find time to take a somewhat wider range. We learn from further inspection and the comments of our guide that there are two methods of colouring the bubbles we see all around us. The one is by using coloured “metal” entirely; the other by “flashing”—coating white glass with a thin film of colour only. All colours may be “flashed;” red must be, because the colouring matter used would render the glass blown entirely from red “metal,” opaque. So, in order to be inducted into the mysteries of “flashing,” we seek out a workman who is about to blow a red bubble. The process, we find, is very simple. Having gathered, upon the end of his blow-pipe, a ball of white metal, the operator, before carrying it to the “marver,” gives it a twirl in a pot of red metal, and then goes on with his blowing. The two colours retain their relative positions throughout every succeeding process; as the one grows thinner and thinner the other grows thinner and thinner; and the final result is a sheet of white glass coated with red on one side. Passing on from one workman to another, we notice that, though there are bubbles of every other colour, there are no yellow ones; and, on asking the reason, we are told that all the shades of yellow are produced, not out of yellow metal, nor by flashing, but by staining white glass. And, with the promise that we shall be shown how staining is done, we leave the fiery workshop.

Still confining ourselves strictly to the object of our visit, which is to see how coloured windows are made, we next visit the studio of the designers of the establishment, where we find several gentlemen painting small designs upon paper, and others enlarging similar designs, previously painted, to the size at which they are intended to be reproduced in glass. One here is intent upon a window full of saints for a foreign cathedral; another, there, is touching off the mane of a rampant red lion for a public-house lamp; while a third is deep in the mystic labyrinths of a rich arabesque; and a fourth is throwing off the outline of one of a series of historical subjects for the hall windows of some nobleman’s mansion. While we are examining these works of art, a workman enters and asks for the “cartoon of St. Catherine.” One of the enlarged paintings is given him, and on a hint from our guide we follow him out of the room with it. Carrying it into a workshop where bins of glass of all colours surround a large table, he lays his cartoon flat; and, selecting a piece of blue glass, places it upon a part of the picture coloured blue. He then follows the outline beneath with his diamond, and eventually snaps out a piece of blue glass of the exact shape and size of his pattern. Red glass, green glass, and white glass, to be stained yellow, or to be painted in different colours, follow, until every part of the cartoon has been reproduced in glass. That done, the pieces of glass are carried off to the studio of the glass painters, where they are fitted together on the face of the cartoon, like a piece of mosaic work, and where those parts of the outline not represented by the joints—as most of the outline is—are “put in” with a brown enamel colour which, after baking, becomes part and parcel of the glass. The baking over, the pieces of glass again come to the painter, who then fits them together upon a large sheet of white glass, to which he attaches them with drops of hot resin. He next rears the whole sheet upon an easel, and, so placing it that the light shall fall through it, puts in his shadows and covers certain of the “whites” with a preparation of silver. Another baking fixes the shadows; and, the silver scraped off, the “yellows” are revealed. After this the pieces are again set up on the easel, and those parts—such as flowers and borders—that require lines of colour too fine to be represented in mosaic, are either skilfully painted in or stencilled. This painting, we are told, often occupies many days, for during the progress of the work baking must follow baking as often as the necessities of the case demand it. And, even when the laying on of colour is finished, there is, if the design be very elaborate, one other work to be performed upon it. It is often desirable that a few lines of white or yellow should appear in the midst of the darker colours—as with moonbeams upon the water, or gold or silver embroidery upon drapery. In these cases the kind of glass used is that which has been “flashed,” and to produce the required effect, the artist covers the coloured side of it with a thin coating of wax; picks out his design in little channels that reach down to the surface of the glass; pours into these channels an acid which eats away the coloured face; and then, either leaves it as it is, or stains his white lines yellow in the manner before described. In the end, when the whole painting is finished, the pieces of glass are handed over to the glaziers, who join them together with grooved strips of lead, and the window is complete.

And this was how they made young Cupid, who, for all I know, still sits in the old Gothic window yonder, “blowing bubbles.” J. L.

the rural districts, when a man has the misfortune to run a nail into his foot, he finds it, carefully greases it, wraps it up, and lays it away in a safe and dry place. This is supposed to promote the healing of the wound and prevent lock-jaw. In like manner, an axe or chisel, which has inflicted a wound, is carefully wiped and protected from rust.

The philosophy of our day is not far-sighted enough to find out the relation between the nail or axe which has given a wound, and the wonderful processes by which nature repairs the injury; but our venerated ancestors, for some centuries, had entire faith in this sympathetic surgery; and, though long since rejected by men of science, it still survives among that large class