Journal of Glass Studies (review)

110 Book Reviews TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Journal of Glass Studies. Vol. 13. Corning, N.Y.: Corning Museum of Glass, 1971. Pp. 180; illustrations. $10.00. A feature of past volumes of this painstakingly produced Journal that is omitted from the 1971 volume is that giving biographical details about the contributors. In these days of high printing costs it is understandable that in grasping the nettle “economy” the edition should cut out the least significant section. Useful though these few pages of data were, particularly to reviewers, their absence involves but a small sacrifice. Many of the Journal’s contributors are “regu­ lars” whose careers have been sketched in earlier volumes; indeed, one imagines it would be a very formidable task to fill year by year a volume of the size and scholarly standard of the Journal without the continuing support of some of these specialists. This time there are ten articles covering a wide range of subjects, but only four of their authors are new contributors to the Journal, which, incidentally, is somewhat slimmer than volume 12, though its price has had to be put up. Though placed last of the ten articles, that by the Corning Mu­ seum research assistant Jane S. Shadel on the cup-plate is not lacking in interest. What was the purpose of the cup-plate, that small sau­ cer-like article of glass which had a place on the American meal table over a period of some sixty years in the middle of the 19th century? Pressed by the thousand, they were allotted a place in the diagram of a set tea table in Catherine Beecher’s A Treatise on Domestic Economy, for the Use ofYoung Ladies at Home and at School (New York, 1845); yet the precise use to which they were put has not been ascertained despite much delving into the literature of the period. The name suggests that a cup might have been rested on it to prevent drips from staining the tablecloth while hot tea was being drunk from the saucer. Drinking from the saucer went out in Britain in the 18th centurv after cups were fitted with handles, but perhaps the old practice of drinking a “dish of tea” survived in some circles in America, so that a cup-plate was required. The preceding article also raises a nice point—when were corks first used in bottles? Helen McKearin, part-author of the massive pioneer work American Glass and author of American Historical Flasks and other studies, cites the mention in The New English Dictionary of the words “Stoppe the bottle with a corke” (1530), and in the 1588 Good Hous-wives Treasurie it is suggested that “glasses” (i.e., bottles) of rose-water would keep for two or three years when stoppered with “wax or corke and some sercenet about the Corke or waxe and covered with leather or parchment.” These quotations indicate that corks were being employed to seal some bottles in the 16th century, but in those times wine bottles were usually used as decanters, and it was probably not until the next century that they were used to any TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Book Reviews 111 extent for binning wine. Appositely Helen McKearin investigates the corkscrew, which was mentioned by that name early in the 18th century, though clearly cork-drawing instruments were used consid­ erably earlier, for there are references to “a Steel Worme for the drawing of Corks out of Bottles” in 1681 and to a “cork-drawer” in 1686. Common beverage bottles and their production, use, and forms in the 17th- and 18th-century Netherlands is the subject of a notable and copiously illustrated contribution by Robert H. McNulty. Dutch eating and drinking habits are vividly depicted in innumerable paintings, and it is not surprising that the demand for bottles was heavy, for the breakage rate during those roistering feasts must have been high. The importance attached to glass bottles can be gauged from the privileges accorded to bottle manufacturers in the 17th century, and makers of the stronger English-type bottles—produced from coal-fired furnaces —were especially welcomed. McNulty gives a well-documented account of the growth of the Dutch bottle

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