Not dreaming, Norm, but I suspect you've been watching Qi. One of its 'gems' was suggesting that China's lack of progress was due its consumption of tea from porcelain vessels rather than
glass.
It is possibly true that the lack of lenses and glass vessels such as retorts and flasks etc might hinder scientific experimentation but that seems a bit cart before horse. If the desire to produce these was there then they would undoubtedly have been developed.

ferval wrote:

Not dreaming, Norm, but I suspect you've been watching Qi. One of its 'gems' was suggesting that China's lack of progress was due its consumption of tea from porcelain vessels rather than glass.
It is possibly true that the lack of lenses and glass vessels such as retorts and flasks etc might hinder scientific experimentation but that seems a bit cart before horse. If the desire to produce these was there then they would undoubtedly have been developed.

It seems that Chinese glass was essentially decorative rather than practical. They apparently used moulded glass, but did not get around to blowing glass into hollow spherical container shapes. As for lenses, they were a pretty late piece of D & T in Europe.
That might appear a bit lax of the Chinese, but is comparable in many ways to the Greeks inventing the steam engine and then reckoning it to be a great executive toy. As with all technology, inventing something is the first stage; finding a use for it is the quantum leap. Television, afterall, was apocryphally written off as a nine-day wonder in the 1920s....

Thanks for the vote of confidence ferval… since I’ve managed to wean myself off the loopy juice it’s amazing how long the after effects last… and it’s a bugger to stop and think hard before stepping into a trap whereby your unsure if what you recall is a memory or the result of that damned stuff, the downside of course is still to endure the pain. However… you’re probably right ref QI… although it could equally have been The Antiques Roadshow… whichever is of no importance, I’m just relieved to know I hadn’t dreamt it. I guess what you say about glass vessels and retorts etc is what I had in mind along with the lenses I mentioned… much as I appreciate the ‘cart before the horse’ jibe… and I’m smiling, but I do feel a bit of an ass for raising the subject as it is.

HMJ… Whatever or wherever I picked up on this, I think this was the point being made… i.e. Chinese glass being decorative more than practical… could this have been due to a lack of raw materials, I know the basic constituents of glass, and was surprised many years ago to have a regular ‘run’ from Antwerp to Topsham on the River Exe of all places with cargoes of ‘silver sand’… an essential ingredient for the making of fine glass and optics… Not one to shy away from showing my ignorance… what is D & T…? Ahh but… without the development and improvements of glass… there would be no television, nor computers… no light bulbs, no radar nor anything requiring a cathode ray tube or valves… I’m pretty sure they reckoned there might possibly be a need for nine computers… The knock on effect of glass is immeasurable surly…

Norm there was no jibe aimed at you, rather the ubiquitous and reputedly omniscient Mr Fry and his team.

Regarding glass, ferval, I noted your comments on the Anglo-Saxon jewellery thread that, because most metals are so readily recyclable, we don't often find copper, bronze, or iron articles, except as religious votive offerings etc. I was going to post something along the same lines about glass... but wasn't sure about my "facts". I'm still not sure, but glass is inherently a quite readily recyclable material ... at least to get a basic, smooth, translucent pot, bowl, shiny "fake" jewel etc. I was wondering if that is why we do not see many more Anglo-Saxon or Celtic glass objects. They had the technology to forge iron tools and cast bronze, and apparently produce glass enamel work so evidently they could get furnace temperatures well up into glass melting regions (which need not be that high actually) and the only other problem I think would be keeping out impurities while handling, containing and forming the semi molten glass (which is very corrosive)... but I don't think the problem was beyond iron-age celtic/saxon artisans... and so then, why not also the Chinese?

Perhaps one doesn't associate China with much glass usage, because it was nearly all recycled. Or am I talking complete rubbish?

Certainly the Romans recycled glass extensively, as they did with everything of value, and it was a well organised and important part of the industry. Guessing, I'd think that all glass making cultures will have done the same.

This is completely off the cuff, but... now I think on it, it seems to me, from a purely technological viewpoint, that glass-making and iron-making almost go hand-in-hand. Cast iron is melted in a suitable furnace using a sandstone/limestone block hearth, and is then cast into sand moulds.... molten glass (basically molten silver sand - ie pure silica, without too many impurities) is melted in large iron pans and stirred, sieved,and handled using iron tools, and blown using iron tubes. The manufacture and handling of the two products requires similar temperatures, similar technology, and similar controls to keep out impurities... but, at least on a basic level the two can be used to handle one another.

I think the technological breakthrough came about when somebody stuck a blob of the molten goo on the end of a tube and blew air into it, (and subsequently spun it around to gain a uniform shape).
Unless they were bagpipe-players, I'm not sure what might have inspired whoever to try this. It would, afterall, have been the first 'plastic' material, ( one that hovers between being liquid and solid), so there is no technological precedent.

If we're into imaginative scenarios, what if a blob of the glassy stuff stuck to the mouth of the bellows and the air blew it out?
I think the first glass objects were made in moulds but I may well be blethering.

If I remember correctly ferval, that was indeed the case. Glass was first made using moulds, it wasn't until much later that blowing was discovered or introduced.

I suspect like me you probably saw some artisan sat in a shop window in a quaint seaside town making those hideous glass animals… with nothing more than a gas welding torch and a selection of broken bottles… guess who had to have a go at that when he had a workshop then. Many a happy hour spent making all kinds of a mess in my lunch hour from old medicine and wine bottles. Once you can do it, like riding a bike it’s so easy… well not to create a piece of art, but to melt sumfin to look like a cow with a long neck that you quickly pass off as a giraffe.



I think the earliest examples of glass is with beads for decoration… have I got that right… lord knows how they did that coz I couldn’t, but I did enjoy trying and wasted a good few bottles of gas in the process…


I suppose in antiquity those that could do these kinds of things were revered almost like early alchemist and such like. I’m trying to work out how an early iron worker could make a tube to use as a blowpipe long enough and true enough… its fascinating to take a trip around a glassworks to watch these people… but that blowpipe has to spin very true.

You can, of course, make "glass" in a number of different ways - using a flame, a blowpipe the size of a drinking straw,and a block of charcoal. In my day, an "O" level chemistry student could produce a nice blue bead of glass from borax as part of the qualitative analysis part of the practical exam.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/ahistoryoftheworld/objects/2GL6QSA8SMmcMCtPgHQJsw

has a bit of info on the differences between european and levantine glass.

normanhurst wrote:

I’m trying to work out how an early iron worker could make a tube to use as a blowpipe long enough and true enough…

It would not have to be as 'true' as a gun barrel; the early Chinese glass-worker, had he thought about it, could have used a bamboo pipe with a cast-iron end to accept the bulb of molten glass. And it would not be without reason to sand-cast a bronze tube in two lateral halves.

Hugh_Mosby_Joaquin wrote:

ferval wrote:

One of its 'gems' was suggesting that China's lack of progress was due its consumption of tea from porcelain vessels rather than glass. It is possibly true that the lack of lenses and glass vessels such as retorts and flasks etc might hinder scientific experimentation but that seems a bit cart before horse. If the desire to produce these was there then they would undoubtedly have been developed.

It seems that Chinese glass was essentially decorative rather than practical. That might appear a bit lax of the Chinese, but is comparable in many ways to the Greeks inventing the steam engine and then reckoning it to be a great executive toy. As with all technology, inventing something is the first stage; finding a use for it is the quantum leap.

There was also a cultural element to the Chinese eschewing of glass which was seen as being both expensive and dangerous. Broken glass is very sharp, it can easily cut you or even be used as a weapon. It was thus viewed as being unecessarily troublesome to the Taoist and Confucian mind.
 
In terms of windows, then Chinese lattice windows were backed by screens made from bamboo fibre matting or paper. Both materials were cheaper to install than glass and easier to replace if damaged. The very wealthy, however, used screens made from silk. Sometimes the matting, paper or silk would be fitted directly to the latticework. Paper and silk also have the characteristic of being able to let in light while providing privacy to those within. This may also have been another cultural consideration.

This was a consideration evident in Europe even until quite recently. For instance, were one to have travelled between London and Amsterdam in the 1950s you would have seen net curtains proliferate behind the windows of the houses in the former while being almost completely absent in the latter. The citizens of Amsterdam liked to show off the interiors of their homes to passers-by while Londoners, by contrast, preferred to keep their homes private. That isn’t to say that that the inside of houses in London were any less clean, or the inhabitants any less houseproud, than their near continental neighbours. Yet ‘nets’ as they were commonly called, gradually fell out of fashion and became associated with dust, dirt and even squalor. Since the 1990s in London and much of the rest of Britain, the use of net curtains has become increasingly rare.
   



(A rare surviving example of a Chinese latticework door with paper screening)


Similarly, when eating, the Chinese preferred/prefer the use of chopsticks to the use of knives and forks. They certainly had knives (and forks!) for the preparation of food, but when it came to the serving and eating of food, then the chopstick was the implement of choice. The use of a cleaver in the kitchen was one thing, but to have cutlery such as a sharp knife (i.e. a potential weapon) at the dinner-table was/is considered bad form if not barbaric.  

Glass drinking vessels would have been viewed in much the same way. Why have brittle glass to drink from when you can use porcelain? It’s sturdier when used, is less likely to shatter and is less dangerous if broken. One also needs to consider that the paper and the porcelain sectors were highly developed and well-established in China. This too would have added to the reasons counting against the adoption of glass both in architectural use and for tableware.

Total guess work but perhaps glass ware is simply less interesting to decorate with painted designs. glassware is not a sympathetic enough surface for their artists who  excelled with brush work design. Worked glass is the an artform in its own right and splendid as that can be, it is too delicate  to be worn, cannot be carved and needs preparation for paint....... but perhaps they had glass beads? Coloured, set in filigree, painted, strung? Just thinking.....