What I have said applies to feudal and recent times. If, however, one goes back to the period that preceded the dawn of Japanese history, one finds that plain beads of clear glass, both blue and white, have been discovered in the dolmen tombs.[283] Examples of these beads may be seen in the Gowland collection in the British Museum. Again, in the famous Shoso In Treasury at Nara are two vessels of glass:—(1) a shallow bowl of transparent green glass, carved in relief with a design of fishes and water-plants; (2) a cup of white glass, carefully executed, the surface carved with a diaper pattern made up of shallow hexagonal hollows. There is no reason to doubt the well-authenticated record that these glass bowls were deposited with the rest of the collection by the Emperor Shomu in the year 756 of our era. There are in the same Shoso In, and in other Imperial collections among objects dating from this time, examples of metal ware and of silk brocade that show evidence of a Western Asiatic, probably Sassanian, origin. These and other objects that are undoubtedly of an exotic origin may perhaps many of them have been presents from the Chinese emperors on the occasion of embassies from Japan. It is certainly a fact that in the previous century the sons and retainers of the last Sassanian ruler of Persia had fled before the Arab invaders and taken refuge with the Chinese court, bringing with them such treasure as they had been able to save from the general wreck. This fact may give a hint as to the origin of the Shoso In glass. At any rate, in China at this period there is no evidence of any skill in glass-working. CHAPTER XXII CONTEMPORARY GLASS The history of glass in the nineteenth century is mainly concerned with improvements in mechanical processes, by means of which it is now possible to turn out a perfectly clear white glass in large quantities at greatly reduced cost. Meantime little heed has been given to the artistic merit of individual pieces. In fact, thanks in no small measure to one widely applied mechanical ‘improvement,’ the process namely of pressing into a mould, the highly trained skill of the glass-blower has been less and less called into play, so that now a complaint is heard, both in England and in France, of the difficulty of finding workmen thoroughly masters of the art. The last stage, indeed, in the decline of our English cut-glass was reached when ‘passable imitations’ of the facetted work were turned out by this ‘pressing’ process.