If you’ve ever held a glass up to the light and seen a rainbow, you were holding crystal.Īs the world hurries forward, Saint-Louis maintains a steady heat. If you’ve ever run your finger around the rim of a glass and heard it sing, you were holding crystal. (That’s more than one-third the temperature of the sun!) The addition of lead gives crystal its heft, sonority, and refraction, a fancy way of saying it sparkles in a way your water glass never will. To make everyday glass, sand is mixed with potash and melted in a 3,632☏ oven. Eiffel’s red roof and the iron tools used in the manufactory below have changed very little since then-not even when Hermès acquired the brand in 1989. The growing company built a new workshop crowned with a roof designed, it’s believed, by Gustave Eiffel. Soon, it began to produce multitiered chandeliers that sparkled above the heads of French nobility, and jewel-toned crystal glasses that were raised to the lips of kings. Fourteen years later, in 1781, Saint-Louis introduced lead, the crucial ingredient in crystal, and became the first company in continental Europe to perfect the crystal-making process. Then in 1767, King Louis XV, impressed with the quality of the glass, bestowed letters of nobility on the company that allowed it to use the royal moniker: Saint-Louis. Before that glass leaves the workshop, it will have been handled by 28 different people over the course of 25 days.įor years, the workshop made plain glass in relative anonymity.
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