COLONIAL WILLIAMSBURG — ^WERTENBAKER 453 



That the people of Williamsburg often quaffed their wine or ale from 

 glass goblets rather than mugs or tankards may be inferred from 

 the finding of many fragments of wineglasses. In the eighteenth 

 century the British glassblowers delighted in ornamenting the stems 

 of the goblets according to certain well-recognized patterns, so that 

 when one grasped the stem to lift the glass to his lips he could recog- 

 nize at a glance that it was a baluster stem, or an opaque-twisted stem, 

 or a ribbed stem, or a tear and beaded stem, or an air-twisted stem, 

 or a cut-glass stem. That the Virginians, who depended entirely 

 upon imports for their glassware, filled their diningroom cupboards 

 with goblets in all these styles, the discoveries of the archeologists 

 amply testify. 



For the important information yielded by objects made of iron 

 the archeologists had to pay by the trouble it took to clean and preserve 

 them. Often, when a hinge, or a shovel, or a knife was discovered, 

 they found that under the action of the earth, it had almost rusted 

 away. So in the laboratory every bit of iron was subjected to a thor- 

 ough process of cleaning. First, as much of the rust as possible was 

 scraped off with a knife. Then the object was treated with granu- 

 lated zinc in a caustic bath, after which it went through repeated 

 washings, followed by drying in an oven to remove every bit of mois- 

 ture from the pores. The process was completed by giving the iron 

 a coat of paraflfin. 



We can follow the colonial carpenters in the work of constructing 

 the Williamsburg houses by the implements they used and then cast 

 aside — saws, gouges, augers, chisels, axes, lathing hatchets, wedges, 

 frows for splitting shingles, compasses, hammers, draw knives. 

 These implements, though the same as those used by their ancestors 

 in England, in some cases underwent a development in the hands 

 of the Virginians. In the axes with which the settlers at Jamestown 

 had made their first assault upon the great oaks and chestnut trees 

 of the primeval forests, almost the entire weight was on the cutting 

 side of the head. But in time, when experience had shown that more 

 drive was needed behind each stroke, the colonists gradually weighted 

 the blunt side. Thus the eighteenth-century Virginia axes were 

 unlike those of seventeenth-century Virginia and imlike those of 

 England. 



If one wishes to accompany the planter in his various tasks in culti- 

 vating the soil, one has only to examine the farm implements found 

 at Williamsburg— tobacco knives, hoes, scythes, rakes. A sight of 

 the cobbler's knives, pliers, pincers, hammers, rasps, and other tools, 

 makes it easy to visualize Robert Gilbert in his shop near the Capitol, 

 his leather apron spread over his knees, busily at work on a pair of 

 • shoes. The pickup tongs, the grip tongs, the bending forks, the sledge 



