GLASS-MAKING. 25 



artists have learned to adapt them to their picture-windows as 

 well as to their geometrical designs. The workmen have attained 

 no little skill in the art of mixing. They have learned to reduce 

 the accidental element in this apparently hit-or-miss process to a 

 minimum, and with a fair degree of accuracy to secure predeter- 

 mined combinations. The mixture of blue and white translucent 

 glass in particular is made to represent sky effects as naturally as 

 if the colors had been laid on by an artist's brush. It is true that 

 this combination is prone to represent an August sky ; but this is 

 not to be regretted, since at no other season of the year are the 

 heavens more beautiful. 



By this mode of manufacture the glass has an unequal thick- 

 ness and consequent varying depth of color that well adapt it for 

 art purposes. For certain uses, however, particularly for drapery, 

 the differences in color tone are still not sufficiently great, and 

 other devices must be resorted to. A special product, known as 

 drapery glass, has of recent years been added to the already ex- 

 tended list, and produces a most excellent effect. While the sheet 

 of glass on the casting table is still sufficiently hot to be plastic, it 

 is seized by suitable tools, and rumpled up until it looks like a 

 piece of crumpled cloth. It is permitted to cool in this condition, 

 and, when introduced into a picture-window, presents a luminous 

 substitute scarcely less natural than real drapery. One is almost 

 tempted to run his hand over the folds to try their texture. 



It is by processes so painstaking and so ingenious as these that 

 the material for our picture-window is won. The industry is still 

 a comparatively new one, yet so marked are the improvements 

 witnessed by the passing years that the artist is now almost un- 

 restricted in making the design of his window. Should it contain 

 any effects not expressible in materials already at hand, the de- 

 ficiency is only an incentive for further effort, and the needed 

 material is pretty sure to be speedily forthcoming. 



So much for the body of our window : the soul of it comes by 

 a less visible process. - 



In some quiet moment, under the influence of a strong senti- 

 ment, or in the face of an inspiring vision, a suggestion of beauty 

 is evolved in the artist mind. Why it comes in one brain rather 

 than in another it would be difficult to say. Whether it is the 

 result of some subtile chemical reaction in the gray and the white, 

 or the incomprehensible force that has caused this reaction, it 

 seems almost useless to inquire. But in some way or other the 

 vision comes, and finds lodgment under a hospitable roof. It is 

 entertained and communed with until it takes definite shape, and 

 the conception is committed to paper. It is at first little more 

 than a suggestion, a small colored sketch. If this prove satisfac- 

 tory, it becomes the nucleus of a window, and undergoes its first 



