The Performance of the Glass Industry in Sixteenth-Century England.

The article discusses the performance of the glass industry in 16th century England. For window glass the available prices were perhaps fewer than one would wish but are nevertheless sufficient to suggest that the industry was able to thrive while holding its prices down in real terms. For glass, before the radical change from wood fuel to coal in the early part of the seventeenth century, a series of small improvements in method were brought and perhaps further developed after 1567 by workers from Lorraine and Normandy, who not only enabled production to respond to increasing demand, but served to enhance demand still further by improving quality and holding down costs and prices. The evidence for the increasing use of glass in buildings is widespread, although inappropriate to strict quantitative measurement. It has been inferred that the medieval tradition of glass-making in England was moribund by the middle of the sixteenth century and that imports provided for the greatest proportion of the market.