anaclastic glass

plural anaclastic glasses

1. A glass or phial, shaped like an inverted funnel, with a very thin convex bottom that can be made concave or convex by sucking out or blowing in air, used to demonstrate the malleability of glass.

   […], such as the anaclastic glasses (vases blown with a thin bottom that could spring in and out without breaking) to which Lentilius’s article was devoted.

   2017, Vera Keller, “Storied Objects, Scientific Objects, and Renaissance Experiment: The Case of Malleable Glass”, in Renaissance Quarterly, volume 70, number 2

   1 more example

   Anaclastic glasses are chiefly manufactured in Germany of a fine white glass, but any other glass, which is uniform in its substnace, and not very hard, will do equally well.

   1832, The Edinburgh Encyclopaedia - Volume 1, page 703

2. Synonym of vexing glass.

   One astronomer's anaclastic glass; if a friend looks through it and a small screw is turned, it will blow pepper and snuff into his eyes.

   1990, Sigmund Freud, Walter Boehlich, The Letters of Sigmund Freud to Eduard Silberstein, 1871-1881, page 74

   2 more examples

   The Double reflects the drama of the lonely man of our time as in an anaclastic glass. What is piquant is that the costs of the fruitless emancipation are borne, not by a hero, a great personage, but by an amusing little fellow, one of the poor people .

   1928, Julius Meier-Graefe, Dostoevsky: The Man and His Work, page 70

   The earlier poems of Spring and All are less exquisite than this: like anaclastic glasses which refract the broken rays of light, they relate in style to the structure of the crystal, rather than in idea to the lucidity of glass.

   1983, Carroll Franklin Terrell, William Carlos Williams: Man and Poet, page 190

   Synonyms: vexing glass