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These and hundreds of others Colin learned to know from the collections. It was with great delight that Colin heard of the presence of his friend Mr. Collier, who was working on the plans for a model of Bryozoa, and who had with him his staff of glass-workers and modelers.
Some projects, such as that for the settlement of Italian glass-workers who were to manufacture pottery and beads for use in the Indian trade, could be financed by subscriptions to a special joint-stock, but this device offered no help in meeting general expenses. As a result, Sandys continued to take certain shortcuts, or perhaps the blame should rest rather on Deputy John Ferrar.
He stood admiring the conceptions and the craftsmanship of those thirteenth century glass-workers, their emphatic language, necessary at such great heights, the way in which they had made the pictures legible from a distance by introducing a single figure in each, whenever that was possible, and painting it in massive outline, with contrasting colours, so as to be easily taken in at a glance when seen from below.
The legend, whether authenticated or not only Macdonald, the historian of Fernhurst, could say, was handed down from generation to generation. It was believed that, when the building of the Abbey was finished, all the masons, glass-workers and artificers packed up their tools and paraded the town with music and song, celebrating the glory of their accomplished work.
A century ago this famous town was known as the "toy-shop of Europe." Its glass-workers stand at the head of their profession, and here are made the great lighthouse lenses and the finest stained glass to be found in English windows. The Messrs. Elkington, whose reputation is worldwide, here invented the process of electro-plating.
"How odd to have the lid lifted here, and see the same old problems seething and bubbling in the witch's caldron we call civilization as we left simmering away at home! And how hard to have our tariff reach out and snatch the bread from the mouths of those poor glass-workers!" "I thought that was hard," she sighed. "It must have been his bread, too." "Let's hope it was not his cake, anyway.
In Venice the glass-workers were sent to the island of Murano, where the factories still are; in Périgord they were kept in the forest, where they could cut down the logs they needed for their kilns, and where certain sorts of trees and ferns grew which, when reduced to powder, were needed in the manufacture of the glass.
At present nothing more could be done, for Zorzi has disappeared altogether, and old Beroviero was much inclined to share his son's opinion that the fugitive was already on his way to Milan, or Florence, where the possession of the secrets would insure him a large fortune, very greatly to the injury of Beroviero and all the glass-workers of Murano.
And here, throned in regal state, in its quaint case of faded azure velvet, is that very masterpiece of the glass-workers of Murano which was carried in the first solemn procession of all the arts at a Doge's triumph in the thirteenth century.
"How odd to have the lid lifted here, and see the same old problems seething and bubbling in the witch's caldron we call civilization as we left simmering away at home! And how hard to have our tariff reach out and snatch the bread from the mouths of those poor glass-workers!" "I thought that was hard," she sighed. "It must have been his bread, too." "Let's hope it was not his cake, anyway.
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