. Glass. s marked byspiral lines in relief—that is to say, it is rib-twisted,or, finally, it may be cut into flat facets. But perhapsthe most important division of the stems of our Englishglasses is that based upon the nature of the spiral linesof greater or less complexity so generally found in theinterior of the cylinder of glass. These lines may beformed either by strings or bands of opaque white, ormore rarely of coloured glass, or again by empty threadsformed by drawing out a bubble of air. These are theopaque-twisted and the air-twisted stems respectively. If now we turn to the outline o
. Glass. s marked byspiral lines in relief—that is to say, it is rib-twisted,or, finally, it may be cut into flat facets. But perhapsthe most important division of the stems of our Englishglasses is that based upon the nature of the spiral linesof greater or less complexity so generally found in theinterior of the cylinder of glass. These lines may beformed either by strings or bands of opaque white, ormore rarely of coloured glass, or again by empty threadsformed by drawing out a bubble of air. These are theopaque-twisted and the air-twisted stems respectively. If now we turn to the outline of the main division ofthe glass, the bowl, this has been made the basis of adivision that classes these bowls as straight-sided,waisted, bell-shaped, and finally, bowls with a curveresembling either the ogee or the double ogee of thearchitect. The air-drawn stem, if not an English invention, wascertainly brought to great perfection here at an earlyperiod. We must seek the origin of this device in the326. ENGLISH DRINKING-GLASSES large blows, often of very irregular shape, that fill theknop or bulb on the stems of earlier glasses.^ This blow is sometimes prolonged into a sort of tail whichpasses down nearly to the foot. In other cases we findseveral smaller tears in the same bulb, formed, itappears, by puncturing, while it is still soft, the littlemass of glass destined to form the bulb, and thencovering it with a second gathering. These air-beadedstems are mostly of Low Country origin ; but they are ofinterest to us, as we may probably regard them as thestarting-point of the air-twists which are formed bydrawing out and twisting the original spherical mass,containing one or more of these bubbles or tears. Itmay be mentioned that in a general way a loose, widelyspaced spiral is characteristic of the earlier glasses, whilethe tightly twisted stems are only found on late applies also to the spirals on the rib-twisted stemsof plain glass. There is another point that
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