| Title: | Nobility of glassmakers |
| Original Title: | Noblesse verriere |
| Volume and Page: | Vol. 11 (1765), pp. 179–180 |
| Author: | Antoine-Gaspard Boucher d'Argis (biography) |
| Translator: | Dena Goodman [University of Michigan] |
| Original Version (ARTFL): | Link |
| Rights/Permissions: |
This text is protected by copyright and may be linked to without seeking permission. Please see http://quod.lib.umich.edu/d/did/terms.html for information on reproduction. |
| URL: | http://hdl.handle.net/2027/spo.did2222.0000.510 |
| Citation (MLA): | Boucher d'Argis, Antoine-Gaspard. "Nobility of glassmakers." The Encyclopedia of Diderot & d'Alembert Collaborative Translation Project. Translated by Dena Goodman. Ann Arbor: Michigan Publishing, University of Michigan Library, 2009. Web. [fill in today's date in the form 18 Apr. 2009 and remove square brackets]. <http://hdl.handle.net/2027/spo.did2222.0000.510>. Trans. of "Noblesse verriere," Encyclopédie ou Dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers, vol. 11. Paris, 1765. |
| Citation (Chicago): | Boucher d'Argis, Antoine-Gaspard. "Nobility of glassmakers." The Encyclopedia of Diderot & d'Alembert Collaborative Translation Project. Translated by Dena Goodman. Ann Arbor: Michigan Publishing, University of Michigan Library, 2009. http://hdl.handle.net/2027/spo.did2222.0000.510 (accessed [fill in today's date in the form April 18, 2009 and remove square brackets]). Originally published as "Noblesse verriere," Encyclopédie ou Dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers, 11:179–180 (Paris, 1765). |
Nobility of glassmakers. This is what the gentlemen who are employed in glassblowing are called. It is a common belief that only gentlemen have the right to work at this craft; what is certain is that in the majority of glassworks, it is gentlemen who are employed in this practice, and that they would not tolerate having commoners work with them, except to serve them. Apparently this is why some people believe that the practice of the art of glassmaking constitutes a proof of nobility; and in fact La Roque ( chapter 144 ) [1] says that laws against it have not prevented several glassmakers in a few provinces from being declared nobles in the last investigation into usurpers of nobility (he is talking about the one that was done in execution of the declaration of 1696), although, he says, these glassmakers did not have any charter or other principle of nobility . But according to the true principles it is invariable that the exercise of the art of glassmaking does not confer nobility , nor does it presuppose it. Note, indeed, that the gentlemen of Champagne requested letters of dispensation from Philippe le Bel in order to practice glassmaking, and that all the glassmakers of the other provinces obtained similar ones from the kings who succeeded Philippe le Bel; which they would not have done, if this art had ennobled them, or if it presupposed nobility : thus, all that one can claim is that it does not derogate. In fact, one reads in book 2 of the Theodosian Code that Theodosius honored glassmakers with an exemption from the majority of responsibilities to the republic in order to engage them to improve their profession through the admirable invention of glass. See La Roque, chapter 144 .
Notes
1. [Gilles-André de La Roque de La Lontière, Traité de la noblesse, de ses différentes espèces (Paris, 1678). Note that Boucher d’Argis states incorrectly that La Roque refers to the Declaration of 1696, when the treatise was published in 1678. Indeed, La Roque died in 1686. Note also that this article is drawn entirely from La Roque.]