The glass-workers of Murano were a conservative body; their work was based upon secret processes and rule-of-thumb formulas. The elaborate division into different _arti_ or corporations, each governed by its separate _mariegola_, made it excessively difficult to introduce any radical changes into the methods of work. It is quite pathetic to observe the efforts of the comparatively enlightened governing body, the _conservatori alle arti_, who in the last years of the republic attempted to introduce the new processes that were revolutionising the glass industry in the north of Europe. We find reports signed by great names—Morosini and others—recommending the introduction of English machinery, and drawing up plans for the cultivation of the _Salsola soda_ on the islands of the lagoons. Little attention apparently was given to the artistic side by these reformers. One of the last names in the long list of the Murano glass-makers is that of Giuseppe Briati, famous for the purity of his _cristallo_; he excelled, too, in the designing and the execution of the _vetro di trina_, and Lazari declares that much of the ‘lace glass’ in our collections attributed to the _cinquecento_ belongs rather to him or to his school.[160] Briati in 1739 was allowed to set up a furnace in Venice itself for the preparation of his _cristallo_, the first time for more than four hundred years that such a permission had been granted. It is of this Briati that we are told that his glass found a place on the _credenza_ or buffet at the public banquets of the Doge, beside the gold and silver plate. This would appear to have been an innovation (see above, p. 203) introduced with the special aim of encouraging the declining industry. An exception was again made in favour of one Giorgio Barbaria, who so late as 1790, in the parish of the Gesuiti, manufactured bottles by a new English method. But as a French writer somewhat naïvely puts it—‘_ce genre ne prête guère à la fantaisie_.’ Before this time the Venetians had yielded to the new fashion of the day, and were making cut and engraved glass more or less after German or Bohemian models. Of this class were the _trionfi di tavola_—trophies of glass for the decoration of the dinner-table—as well as the gigantic chandeliers known as ‘_ciocche_.’ To such productions the artistic work of the time appears to have been confined. Of the first there is a fine specimen from the Casa Morosini set out in the centre of one of the rooms in the Museo Civico at Venice. I have already mentioned the chandeliers of cut glass. They played an important part in a _rococo_ interior. After the occupation of Venice by the French in 1797, the Directory attempted unsuccessfully to transplant the manufacture of beads (_marguerites_) to Paris. It is significant that they regarded this as the most important part of the glass industry. The corporations or _arti_ were finally abolished in 1806.