12. Glass, a History

The history of its [glass] production and use

Wikipedia is remarkably details on this topic. I have little to add except to say that windows hold symbolic value, which is why people buy windows with useless pieces of fake frame pretending to divide one pane of glass into six. It seems like glass always looked like that. The muntin hasn’t been functional since colonial times, and many historic styles of building used large panes of glass to show off contemporary glass technology. I’ve seen faux colonial windows (with plastic muntins in the glazing cavity) replaced with wooden single panes in an effort to restore architectural character. The new pretending to be old (twenty year old vinyl window pretending to be of colonial glazing technology) had to make way for the new pretending to be old (new wood window pretending to be Victorian glazing technology).