Ornamental Glass. Frosted Glass.

Manufacturer and Builder 1, 1876

The main feature of "frosted" or enamelled glass, is the absence of color, the ground being produced by white enamel and the pattern by the transparency of the glass at those parts from which the enamel has been removed; and though one element of beauty is wanting, yet there is so much chasteness and elegance in the material itself, and so great an advantage in its reasonable price, that this manufacture deserves cultivation, and only requires a fair share of attention to become of a very considerable importance as branch of decorative art.

The first process in the manufacture is to cover one side of the sheet of glass with an even and thin coating of white enamel, which is ground to an impalpable powder and mixed with gum or milk and water; when dry, the coatig afheres, though not very strongly, to the surface. The pattern is cut out of pasteboard or some pliable material, and is used as a stencil-plate, with this difference however, that instead of any color being brushed on, as in the usual mode of stencilling, the enamel is brushed off, through the openings of the pattern. By this simple method a sheet is rapidly covered with a pattern, and it is then ready for fixing.

So far as the manufacturers have had experience in this branch of trade, there atears to be no salable medium class of ornament between these cheap designs and such as are executed entirely by hand, and therefore partake of the character of drawings or paintings. By using a "sytle" to remove the enamel from the glass, the most elaborate drawings can be executed, each stroke of the style answering to a stroke of the pencil upon paper, the beauty of the design in such cases being limited only by the skill of the draughtsman. The style is occasionalkly used in conjunction with stencillings; a bunch of fruits is stencilled, the leaves and berries being cut out of the plate, and the stems and fibers are put in by hand with the style, and both the style and the stencil-plates are sometimes combined with the painting upon glass. A very usual and advantageous mode of combining these various kinds of work is to surround a window with a richly colored and painted border, and to fill up the center squares with stencilled patterns.