For the making wine glasses, the methods employed by the early glassmaker have changed little with time. The tools the glassmaker employs today are very much the same as those of 250 years ago. They are few in a number even for the most intricate pieces of work, and are so simple as to appear almost primitive. Indeed, their simplicity only serves to emphasize the glassmaker’s dexterity and skill. He judges proportions, like the true artist, by his senses, and creates contour and shape with an ease and perfection that raises his craft to one of dignity.

 Nevertheless, an article fashioned in the glasshouse is not so much the effort of an individual as that of a team, known in the trade as a “shop” or a “chair”. The article, while it is being fashioned in its plastic state, is passed from one worker to another; each presides over one particular operation in the sequence required to complete the article. It is in this sequence of operations that the unique properties of the metal as a medium are exposed. Lead crystal wine glasses can be made to do almost anything in the hands of a skilled craftsman, but by no amount of coaxing or persuasion can the metal be hurried. The speed of each individual in the team or chair must be regulated to suit the medium, and if an error is made in the judgment of time in one operation, the whole sequence is spoiled.

 The making of stemmed wine glasses is a typical process to use as an example. Such wine glasses can be made either in three pieces, the bowl, the stem and the foot-a method described in glasshouse parlance as the “stuck shank”- or, alternatively, the drinking glass can be made in two pieces, the bowl and stem being made in one piece to which a foot is afterwards attached, known more popularly as the drawn shank.

 In the three- pieces method for making wine glasses, the first operation of roughly forming the bowl is carried out by a “foot maker”, the formation of the stem is the task of a “servitor”, and the finishing of the wine glasses are carried out by the “gaffer”, the craftsman presiding over the chair. There are usually one or two boys or apprentice hands who carry away the finished article and generally assist the chair.

 The first operation in forming the glass is carried out by the foot maker, whose task it is to gather or collect the molten glass from the melting pot on a blow-iron. The foot maker place the end of the blow- iron on the surface of the molten glass and rotates it rapidly with his hands. And he carries it to a marver, a heavy slab of iron about two or three feet square with highly polished surface. Such is the consistency of molten glass in this condition that its shape can be altered at will by a simple rolling motion across the smooth surface of the marver.

The marvering operation is interrupted occasionally by the foot maker, to blow down his blow iron, in order to distend the mass of glass into a bulb and he may elongate its shape by holding the blow-iron in a vertical position to allow the bulb of glass to extend slowly under its own weight.

The foot maker, having completed his task of forming the bulb roughly into the shape of the bowl of the glass, now hands it to the servitor, who drops a small knob of molten glass upon the extremity of the bowl. After being heated at the glory hole so that the junction is made complete, this knob of glass is drawn out to form the stem, a small button of glass being left at the unattached end. The servitor now gathers on this extremity an amount of molten glass from the pot to form the foot, which he quickly fashions by flattening with a pair of wooden” clappers”.

 Having completed his part in the formation of the glass, the servitor passes it to the gaffer, who grips the foot by a spring clip attached to an iron rod popularly known in the glasshouse as the “gadget”, a team used continuously in glasshouse parlance since it was invented about a century ago.

 The gaffer now detaches the blow-iron from the bowl of the glass by touching it along the line with a moistened piece of iron, such as a file, and then sharply tapping the blow-iron with it. This causes the bowl to crack completely round its circumference. Still holding the glass by the gadget, the gaffer now reheats it and proceeds to remove the surplus glass from the rim of the bowl with a pair of shears very similar to a large pair of scissors.

 After shearing, the gaffer completes the shape, and finishes the edge of the bowl with his “pucellas”, a pair of spring tongs, somewhat similar to a large pair of sugar-tongs, which he also employs to adjust the diameter of the bowl. The spinning motion thus given to the soft glass prevents it from collapsing under its own weight, which it would very quickly do if allowed to remain still.

 This routine for the making of an article such as wine glasses is not by any means strictly followed in every glasshouse.