Theophilus proceeds in the tenth section to describe how a vase of glass is prepared, and we have here again our earliest description of the process by which the gathering on the blowing-iron is manipulated so as this time to become a hollow vessel. In this case, he tells us, after blowing out your gathering of glass, instead of making an opening at the further end as in the case of the preparation of cylinders, you separate the bulb from the rod with a stick of moistened wood, and make the rod adhere to the lower end of the glass.[92] After reheating the glass, you now, with a piece of wood, widen and shape as you desire the opening where the tube was first attached. The foot is then shaped and hollowed. (If this foot is to be regarded as a separate piece, it is not quite clear how it is attached to the vessel.) The handles are fastened on by means of a string of glass taken from the pot with a slender rod of iron, and by similar means the surface may finally be decorated with threadings of glass. Theophilus then describes how a simple flask with a long neck may be prepared by swinging the bulb over your head, and then, as it cools, letting it hang down from the end of the tube; the vessel is then separated by a piece of moist wood; in this case no second rod is needed. No mention is made of the use of shears for cutting the semi-molten glass; they are replaced in a measure by shaping tools of wood. In the twelfth section we are told of the remains of glass mosaics of various colours found in old pagan buildings, and how from these little cubes enamels are made to be set in gold, silver, and copper. In like manner it is by means of fragments of divers little vessels (_vascula_)—sapphire, purple, or green—that the French colour the costly glass so admired in their windows. This is a statement of no little interest. Section xiii. treats of the manner in which the Greeks decorate the glass cups made from ‘sapphire stones’ with gold and silver leaf, covering the foil with a layer of very fusible colourless enamel. The passage is obscure, and I can only say in passing that I do not think that the process described can be identified with that adopted by the makers of the Roman cemetery glass. In the next section is described the Greek method of decorating glass vessels with the same colours—green, red, and white—that are used in the cloisonné enamels (_electra_). With these colours laid on pretty thickly, as well as with a preparation of gold, ground in a mill, they paint birds and beasts or little rosettes and knots in circles.[93] The Greeks make also bowls of purple and light blue, and flasks with longish necks, twisting around them threads of white glass, of which too the handles are made.