How often in a theatre has one sat in fear and trembling lest some such great glittering mass in the centre of the dome should break loose from its moorings and fall with dire effects on the pit and stalls below? It was under the same conditions that bottles altered their shape and became decanters. These, as will be seen from the illustrations, followed the prevailing fashion in being massive and deeply cut. The stoppers were most frequently of a mushroom shape and were often delicately cut. These decanters were generally made in pairs or in sets of four. From what has been said it will be evident that the glass-making activities of the eighteenth century were by no means confined to the manufacture of drinking glasses. There is no reason to doubt that, even at so early a period as that in which Chiddingfold was a great centre of glass manufacture in this country, many important and really fine pieces were produced. Few examples, however, of what may be termed miscellaneous eighteenth-century glass can be attributed with any certainty to a period earlier than the sixties of that century. At that time the glass-maker’s art was passing through a great period of upheaval and momentous change like the country itself was in both politics and in art. Nor was the change confined to England. In France the florid style of decoration associated with the name of Louis Quinze was giving way, even before the death of the monarch after whom it was named, to the more simple and severely classical style of Louis Seize. In England the dawning of a new taste in artistic decoration became evident about the year 1770 in the work of the silversmiths and goldsmiths, and shortly afterwards in the productions of the porcelain factories of Bow, Chelsea, and elsewhere. In glass a noticeable feature of the change was the increasing use of faceting. Flat facets, divided by sharp angles, are to be found on both stems and shoulders of the glasses, and oftentimes extended half-way up the body itself. Dishes and basins of this period were often completely covered with pyramidal designs so deeply incised that the ware could hardly be handled without danger of breaking. It was about this time, too, that cutting was first done by machinery in the manner already described in Chapter I. The fact that the art of cutting and engraving reached its zenith at this period accounts for the reputation which English glass speedily achieved not only in its native home but on the Continent and in the New World.