Glass

 When I was a kid the  town I live in was largely supported by the glass factory on the edge of town. It was the source of high-end table ware and decorative pieces.  They shipped their product all over the world and there's still a full set of it in the White House in Washington DC. All this beauty and art was produced by some of the roughest, most plain men to ever come out of the hills of West Virginia.  
Once in a while the glass coming out of the ovens had some sort of defect and was not of a high enough quality to be used. On those occasions the large chunks of glass were smashed into sand sized grains and used as the base of the next batch. Sometimes though,the men would take one of these "clinkers" home to decorate their gardens.       That was all done years and years ago. The factory went out of business, the buildings were all torn down, and the workers went to other jobs to feed their families....but the glass still remains. Its not as usual as it used to be to see those chunks of glass but they're still out there...
 The two large items in this photo are both lead crystal glass.