The cables begin as a cluster of strands of tiny threads of glass fibers.
On this core the body of the vessel was built up, usually of opaque blue glass, on which, in turn, were coiled threads of glass of contrasting colour.
Now that the economy is weakening, America is starting to look like a high-technology Gulliver, tied down by costly Lilliputian threads of glass.
His discovery of how to spend it came almost accidentally, in 1968, when a California auctioneer interested him in tiny paintings that turned out to be micromosaics, images created by threads of glass.
Indeed, two "paintings" in his collection led him down an unexpected path because they were not in fact paintings but micromosaics, a term he later coined to describe mosaics that use threads of glass to create an impression of a painting.
The other 85 went bankrupt, were liquidated, were acquired or were left behind as the economy rushed ahead on its threads of glass fiber.
The original arched windows are appropriately Calvinist in spirit, bearing just a modest red thread of stained glass.
When it came, it was a squawking, ducklike sound, odd in its guttural overtones, yet paradoxically bright, shiny, and thin, like a drawn thread of hot glass.
"I tell you the division is a thread, a sheet of glass".
The shape of the Römer is a hemisphere superimposed on a cylinder, with a hollow foot built up by coiling threads of molten glass around a conical core.
