Journal of Glass Studies (review)

TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Book Reviews 367 contains the above-mentioned pneumatic trough, I wish it had been used as an excuse to tell us more about Lady Hippisley, Horner of Mells, and the Frame Institute. But as Mr. Hill undoubtedly discovered in writing this catalog, you cannot please everybody. The catalog is very welcome. Robert P. Multhauf* Journal of Glass Studies. Vol. 14. Corning, N.Y.: Corning Museum of Glass, 1972. Pp. 187; illustrations. $10.00. The Corning Museum of Glass suffered grievously on the morning of June 23, 1972, when a flood struck parts of New York and Penn­ sylvania and the water rose to a height of 64 inches in the galleries and offices, causing great damage to the library and photographic collec­ tions. Also the stock of back numbers of the Journal was destroyed. Another blow sustained by the museum was the departure in July 1972 of Paul Perrot, director of the museum and editor of theJournal, to the Smithsonian Institution to take up a post as assistant secretary (museum programs). This volume 14 is the last to enjoy the benefit of his editorial skill and wide knowledge of the glass scene. Perrotjoined the museum in its second year of existence (1952), became assistant director in 1953, and director in 1960. Not only has he superintended the building up of its collection until it became the most comprehen­ sive in the world, but he has brought to the study of glass, chiefly through the medium of the truly magnificentJournal, much-needed encouragement for which archaeologists, historians, technologists, and mere collectors must be unfeignedly thankful. True, he has had the support of a team of editorial advisers of impeccable reputation, but his able leadership has ensured that each successive number of the Journal bore the stamp of quality. As a book, each volume has been attractively laid out; textual errors have been singularly few, and the quality of illustrations, in color and halftone, has been consistently high. It was fitting that the final number under his editorship should contain a contribution by Gladys Davidson Weinberg, who had the distinction of having her article “Glass Manufacture in Ancient Crete’’ printed as the first item in volume 1. Dr. Weinberg, who used to be attached to the American School of Classical Studies in Athens and later edited Archaeology Magazine, writes this time on mold-blown beakers decorated with mythological scenes. Her interest in this sub- *Dr. Mlt.thavf, senior historian of science at the Smithsonian Institution, was for­ merly director of its National Museum of History and Technology. In addition to being the editor of Isis and the author of many studies on the history of chemistry, he has served as president oi the Society for the History of Technology. 368 BookReviews TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE ject was aroused by a fragment of one such beaker, bearing a rep­ resentation of a human figure in relief, which is in the Art Museum at Princeton University. Having traced a score of somewhat similar beakers in either complete or fragmentary condition in collections as widely scattered as Los Angeles, the National Museum in Athens, in the Baden Museum in Switzerland, in the Hermitage Museum in Leningrad, and in Israel, she has come to the conclusion that they date from the latter part of the 1st century a.d., and she gives some support to a suggestion made nearly 100 years ago that these beakers were connected with athletic events and may have been placed in athletes’ graves. Jumping the centuries, yet in a way related to Weinberg’s subject, is the examination by Brigitte Klesse of allegorical and mythological scenes taken from prints and engraved on glass beakers, goblets, and other vessels by craftsmen in Germany, Silesia, Saxony, and Holland in the 17th and 18th centuries. For instance she shows how Crispin de Passe’s illustrations in the 1607 edition of Ovid’s Metamorphoses were used by Caspar Lehemann and other glass engravers, whereas Virgil Solis’s illustrations for a 1563 edition of Ovid were favored by the engravers in Holland and Saxony. Pride of place in theJournal goes to a study by Elizabeth Riefstahl of an apparently unique Egyptian glass vessel shaped

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