way

In seventeenth-century glass manufacture, particularly in the Rhineland, a way was a standard unit for quantifying raw glass in production. One way consisted of 60 bunches, a grouping used to track material through the furnace and workshop. This hierarchical measurement system, with bunches nested within ways, reflected the need for reliable accounting when moving large batches of molten or worked glass through distinct stages of the trade.

The way applied specifically to Rhenish glass, the soda-lime product that dominated Central European production from the 1600s onward. Rhenish furnaces operated continuously, and workers needed straightforward units to record yield, calculate labor costs, and manage inventory across multiple workshops and markets. The 60-bunch increment allowed for division into smaller practical portions while maintaining clear records in an era before standardized metrication.

Why 60? The number reflects older commercial practice in German and Low Countries trade, where base-60 and base-12 systems persisted longer than in some other regions. Sixty is highly divisible, which made it convenient for splitting tasks among teams and allocating piecework payment to gatherers, blowers, and cutters who worked from the same shop stock.

The way became obsolete as industrial glassmaking shifted toward continuous tanks, standardized yield measurement by weight, and later metric tons in the nineteenth century. By the 1800s, the term had vanished from active use, replaced by weight-based accounting that suited mechanized production and international trade far better than a unit tied to physical bundles and Rhineland custom.