ABSTRACT
Among the many varieties of industries in the Old Regime, glass-making was clearly of secondary importance, far behind the textile industry. Glass-makers from other Italian centers would travel European roads, attempting to cash in on the fashionable taste developing in the courts and among the aristocracy and the bourgeoisie for glass made in the Venetian manner. As early as the sixteenth century, urban authorities refused to host glassworks or expelled them beyond their walls. As for the main technical works discussing glass-making in general before the eighteenth century, the list is fairly brief. The art of glass-making benefited from a relative abundance of written sources, which makes it possible to ask the question of the relationship between formal knowledge and practical know-how handed down from masters to apprentices. The “chemical” dimension of glass-making gave added importance to the formalization of knowledge and to its possible written transmission, probably more so in this particular field than in others.
