Mr. Owen thinks that in whiteness and in softness of texture this Bristol ware exceeds all other opaque glasses of the kind, and comes nearer than any of them in aspect to the soft-paste porcelain of the day. According to the papers left by the above-mentioned Edkins, the better kinds—these were above all tea-poys, enamel-painted in the manner of the contemporary Bristol porcelain—were decorated in the usual way with coloured fluxes melted on in the muffle-stove. But the common articles ‘were simply painted with oil colours mixed with a desiccator and dried hard by artificial heat.’[265] In the Schreiber collection at South Kensington may be seen a pair of candlesticks with twisted stems made of this white opaque Bristol glass. They are well painted with flowers and butterflies on a white chalky ground. At a later time some passable imitations of Venetian glass decorated with white threads in a ruby ground were made at Bristol, as well as bottles splashed with purple, black, and white, after the manner of a French and Venetian ware of the seventeenth century that has already been described. The glass-works at Nailsea, nine miles south-west of Bristol, were established in 1788 and survived to the middle of the last century. To the earlier years of these works may be attributed some jugs of yellowish-green glass, with large splashes of white, that turn up at times in the west of England. James Tassie (born 1735), the Glasgow stonemason, applied the experience he had gained in the modelling of portrait heads in wax to the reproduction of antique gems in coloured pastes. The bright colours of these compare unfavourably with the delicate hues of the glass intaglios that have come down from classical times. But Tassie, both James and his nephew William, also made portrait medallions of a comparatively large size, using a nearly opaque glass paste or frit, more or less resembling porcelain. This paste was formed, it is said, of ‘a finely powdered glass and finely powdered pigments, annealed by being placed in a reverbatory furnace.’ This is a substance of some interest to us, and we may perhaps find in it points of resemblance to the ‘_pâte de verre_’ employed lately by M. Henri Cros (see Chap. XXII.). I can only mention one other local variety of glass. In Ireland, towards the end of the eighteenth century, more than one attempt was made to encourage the manufacture. Some large fruit-dishes of heavy cut-glass, and others in the form of open baskets adorned with festoons, have been traced back to glass-houses established at Waterford about the year 1780. This glass is distinguished by a more or less faint blue tinge derived from a minute quantity of cobalt in the ‘metal.’ The gilding that was largely applied to these vessels was burned in by means of borax, and where the gold has come away the surface of the glass is rough and pitted. CHAPTER XXI