In Sparkling Company: Reflections on Glass in the 18th-Century British World

Abstract

This volume In Sparkling Company: Reflections on Glass in the 18th-Century British World is a major publication that coincides with an exhibition held at the Corning Museum of Glass, 22 May 2021–2 January 2022. However, as the subtitle suggests, this book intends to hold a mirror up to the exhibition, which is itself entitled ‘In Sparkling Company: Glass and the Costs of Social Life in Britain During the 1700s’, and explores further the many themes and issues that are perhaps not best expressed through visual displays. In so doing, the book outlines the new parameters for present and future generations of historians of glass and social life of the eighteenth century. As Christopher L. Maxwell states in the introduction, he hopes this publication and its accompanying exhibition contributes to a perceived lack of breadth in specialist studies on glass, of which ‘few have addressed the cultural significance of glass beyond...