In truth, it is to the Berovieri that the progress in glass-making is due. They invented in 1463 that transparent glass called crystal; and giving up the old simplicity of form and decoration, they became bold and even audacious in their work. They used gold and enamel, and made those occasional pieces, now so precious, on which the designs and inscriptions furnish historical scenes from the fifteenth century. In the beginning of the sixteenth century Andrea Vidaore invented the process of making artificial pearls with the enameller's blow-pipe, and later he invented glass jet, both of which discoveries became very remunerative. In 1507 two Muranese petitioned the Council of Ten for a grant of the monopoly of mirror glass all over the Republic for twenty-five years, and for permission to keep their fires lighted during the two months and a half {130} when all the fires were bound to be extinguished. Prior to this time the method of preparing mirror glass had been known and was used elsewhere; but at Venice the metal plates had been retained. Now, however, began the growth of that enormous industry in mirror plates which has retained its importance even in recent times, and which other nations have tried to appropriate. The art of cutting glass in facets, and imitating precious stones, as well as of coloring "crystal" glass, was discovered in 1605; and all these inventions brought great wealth to the glass-workers, some of whom purchased nobility for themselves and their descendants. Through Colbert, France succeeded in competing with Murano. England did the same by aid of the Duke of Buckingham; and Bohemia gave itself up to glass manufacture in such a way that the Venetian industry suffered at the end of the seventeenth century. Giuseppe Briati, a passionate lover of his art, left Murano, and took service in a manufactory at Prague, and having learned the Bohemian secrets, he returned to Venice in 1736, and obtained a license, for ten years, to manufacture and sell crystals made in the Bohemian fashion. Briati established himself in Venice in the Via del Angello Raffaelo. At this period mirrors were framed with flowers and foliage of cut glass, in relief, and lustres were decorated with flowers, grapes, and leaves in brilliant colors. _Filigrana_ (filigree), too, was much in favor; and some of Briati's vases in this style are now very precious on account of their refinement of form and taste. Briati died in 1772, but at Murano his art survived. In 1790 a license was granted to Giorgio Barbaria to make black bottles for export to England; and soon after he manufactured jet and enamels. Barbaria was the deputy of Murano until the fall of the Republic, when the island became almost a desert, and its master workmen {131} and journeymen sought in other lands the bread they could no longer earn at Murano.