Seventeenth– and Eighteenth–Century English Lead Glass

Abstract

Early glass production was constrained by numerous factors, especially the availability of raw materials and the technologies required to transform these into a desired product, as well as a range of social and economic factors, which provide a stage for the consumption of the finished product. This chapter illustrates the contribution that chemical analysis can make to such studies through the examination of the colourless lead–based glass developed in Britain in the last quarter of the seventeenth century. First the historical background of English society at the end of the 17th and the beginning of the 18th century is discussed with reference to the invention of flint glass or colourless lead–based glass by George Ravencroft. Previous research on this type of material is described and the analytical method for investigation of a series of glass vessels from different locations in the UK is outlined. The lead glass industry of the 1670s and 1680s saw rapid technological change with the adoption of new materials and recipes. These technological changes were rapidly disseminated throughout the industry and many new production sites appeared. By the beginning of the eighteenth–century the English lead–glass industry appears to have settled on the use of a glass batch which remained largely unchanged until the twentieth century.

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