Glass
by Edward Dillon · English · Gutenberg #46877 · 843,178 chars · public domain (US)
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Title: Glass
Author: Edward Dillon
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Language: English
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Transcriber's Notes
When italics were used in the original book, the corresponding text
has been surrounded by _underscores_, and when boldface text was use,
the corresponding text has been surrounded by =equal signs=. In two
instances, the letter N has been printed with a macron above it. This
has been represented as [=N]. Superscripted letters have been preceded
by ^ and when multiple letters are superscripted they have been
surrounded by {}. Subscripted letters and numbers have been preceded
by _ and surrounded by {}. Fractions have been separated from whole
numbers preceding them with a dash such that 1-1/2 represents one and
one half. The letters represented as H./W.E. were originally printed
with the H. directly above the other two letters.
Some presumed printer's errors have been corrected. These are listed in
a second transcriber's note at the end of the text.
THE CONNOISSEUR’S LIBRARY
GENERAL EDITOR: CYRIL DAVENPORT
GLASS
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[Illustration:
_PLATE I_
ENAMELLED GOBLET
VENETIAN OR FRANCO-SYRIAN. CIRCA 1300, A.D.]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
GLASS
BY
EDWARD DILLON, M.A.
[Illustration: The Connoisseur’s Library]
NEW YORK: G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS
LONDON: METHUEN AND CO.
1907
------------------------------------------------------------------------
PREFACE
It is now nearly thirty years since the late Mr. Nesbitt wrote the
introduction to the catalogue of the glass at South Kensington. Some
years previously the description of the glass in the Slade collection
had been intrusted to the same gentleman. Since that time many works
treating of special departments of the history of glass have been
published in France, in Germany, and in Italy. Much fresh light has
been thrown upon the primitive glass of the Egyptians; our knowledge of
the glass of both the Near and the Far East has been revolutionised;
abundant fresh material has been provided for the history of Byzantine
glass, and the wanderings of the glass-workers from L’Altare and Murano
have been traced in full detail. Mr. Hartshorne, in his _Old English
Glasses_, has exhaustively told the story of our native glass from the
documentary side, and has described with the minutest detail the
wine-glasses of the eighteenth century. Apart, however, from the
introductory chapters of the last work, I know of no attempt of recent
years to give a general account of the history of glass—using that
term in the narrower sense—as viewed from the artistic side.
We have at hand in the British Museum a collection of glass that has no
rival elsewhere; only second to it is the collection at South
Kensington. It is in these collections that the history of glass must
be studied. I have from time to time in the following pages called
attention to the most remarkable examples. I hope that what I have said
may assist the student in threading his way through what is a rather
complicated history.
My best thanks are due to Mr. C. H. Read, who has charge of the glass
in the British Museum, for the facilities that he has afforded me in
the photographing of the examples in his department; not less to Mr. A.
B. Skinner, director of the Victoria and Albert Museum, for similar
facilities at South Kensington.
I am indebted to Professor Church for much valuable information and for
some hitherto unpublished analyses of glass; to Lord Rothschild and to
Mr. Vincent Robinson, C.I.E., for photographs of examples of glass in
their collections; finally, to Signor Ongania, of Venice, for
permission to reproduce from Passini’s great work on the Treasury of
St. Mark’s some photographs of the glass there preserved.
E. D.
CONTENTS
PAGE
PREFACE, v
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS, ix
SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY OF WORKS ON GLASS, xxii
KEY TO THE BIBLIOGRAPHICAL LIST, xxviii
CHAPTER I. Introduction, 1
CHAPTER II. Primitive Glass of the Egyptians and Syrians, 18
CHAPTER III. Later Greek Glass and the Moulded and Cast Glass of
the Roman Empire, 43
CHAPTER IV. The Blown Glass of the Roman Empire, 59
CHAPTER V. Early Christian Glass, Byzantine Glass, and the Glass of
the Middle Ages in the East and the West, 89
CHAPTER VI. Glass from Anglo-Saxon and Frankish Tombs. The
so-called Hedwig Glasses, 107
CHAPTER VII. Mediæval Treatises on Glass, 118
CHAPTER VIII. Glass of the Later Middle Ages in Western Europe, 132
CHAPTER IX. The Enamelled Glass of the Saracens, 144
CHAPTER X. The Enamelled Glass of the Saracens (_continued_), 161
CHAPTER XI. The Glass of Venice—The Origins—Beads, 174
CHAPTER XII. The Enamelled Venetian Glass of the Fifteenth Century, 192
CHAPTER XIII. Varieties of Venetian Glass—Early Literature, 200
CHAPTER XIV. The French Glass of the Renaissance, 220
CHAPTER XV. The Renaissance Glass of the Spanish Netherlands and of
Spain, 240
CHAPTER XVI. The Glass of Germany. The Green Glass of the Rhine and
the Netherlands—Enamelled Glass, 251
CHAPTER XVII. The Glass of Germany (_continued_). German Cut and
Engraved Glass—The Ruby Glass of Kunckel—_Milch_ Glass, 276
CHAPTER XVIII. Dutch Glass of the Seventeenth and Eighteenth
Centuries, 294
CHAPTER XIX. English Glass of the Sixteenth and Seventeenth
Centuries, 299
CHAPTER XX. English Glass of the Eighteenth Century, 321
CHAPTER XXI. The Seventeenth and Eighteenth Century Glass of
Persia, India, and China, 337
CHAPTER XXII. Contemporary Glass, 356
INDEX, 361
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
I. SYRIAN OR VENETIAN GLASS. Enamelled Beaker of slightly
greenish glass with a few elongated bubbles. (H. 7-1/2 in.)
The Virgin and Child enthroned between conventional lilies;
on either side an angel holding a tall candle; beyond, the
figures of St. Peter and St. Paul. Above, an inscription in
Gothic characters—D[=N]IA MATER REGIS ALTISSIMI ORA P PA.
From the Adrian Hope collection. End of thirteenth century.
British Museum. (_Frontispiece._)
II. UNGUENTARIA OF PRIMITIVE GLASS. British Museum.
(1) From Gurob, near Illahun, Upper Egypt. (H. 4 in.)
Decoration of palm-pattern formed by double drag, on a
sard-coloured translucent ground. Nineteenth Dynasty.
(2) Amphora-shaped vase. (H. 5-3/8 in.) Pattern formed by
simple drag, on opaque red ground. The body apparently turned
on wheel. Handles of green transparent glass. Said to come
from the Ionian Islands.
(3) Small Jug of Oenochoë shape. (H. 5-1/2 in.) Palm pattern
formed by double drag, on dark blue, nearly opaque ground.
_Provenance_ uncertain. From the Slade collection.
(_To face p. 22._)
III. EGYPTIAN GLASS PASTES. British Museum.
(1) Scarab of dark blue paste with white veins
imitating _lapis lazuli_. (L. 3-1/2 in.) From Thebes.
Later Empire.
(2) Vase for cosmetics, in shape of column with papyrus
capital. (H. 3-3/4 in.) Slade collection.
(3) Plaque of ‘fused mosaic.’ (L. 3-1/4 in., about 3/8 in. in
thickness.) From the cemetery at Denderah. Ptolemaic period.
(_To face p. 32._)
IV. (1) Small bottle (‘lachrymatory’). (H. 3 in.) Glass of
various colours arranged in wavy lines, and now in part
iridescent. Probably from a Greco-Roman tomb. Slade
collection.
(2) Bowl of thin white glass, finished on the lathe. (Diam.
3-3/4 in.) Probably from a late Greek tomb.
(3) Spherical vase of pale blue transparent glass. (H.
3-3/8 in.) The mark of the two parts of the mould into which
the glass was blown is visible. Decoration of dolphins,
fishes, etc., on bands. Probably Roman, first century A.D.
Slade collection. 1, 2, and 3, all in British Museum.
(_To face p. 45._)
V. TWO BOWLS OF MILLEFIORI ROMAN GLASS. Probably Roman, first
century A.D. British Museum.
(1) Madrepore pattern, in dark purple ground. (Diam. 5 in.)
(2) Breccia pattern, in purple ground with white scrolls.
From the Durand collection. (Diam. 5-1/4 in.)
(_To face p. 50._)
VI. (1) Beaker with oval bosses, formed by blowing into a mould
with apertures. (H. 5 in.) Clear white glass. Said to have
come from Constantinople. Greco-Roman, first century A.D.
(2) Tall-necked flask of pale green transparent glass. (H.
6-3/4 in.) Maze-like pattern, formed by blowing into mould.
Greco-Roman. From Melos.
(3) Small octagonal pyx, or case for cosmetics. (H.
6-1/4 in.) White opaque glass (but probably originally
transparent); blown into mould. From Sidon. Probably first
century B.C. 1, 2, and 3, all in British Museum.
(_To face p. 56._)
VII. SEPULCHRAL GLASS FROM THE SYRIAN COAST (said to come from
Mount Carmel). Probably about first century B.C. Pale green
glass, with iridescence. British Museum.
(1) Vase for cosmetics in shape of double column. (H.
5-1/4 in.)
(2) Vase with six handles. (H. 4-1/4 in.)
(3) Vase with handles and stringings of cobalt-blue. (H.
8 in.) (_To face p. 60._)
VIII. BOWL OF OLIVE-GREEN GLASS, carved in high (detached) relief.
Mounted on metal stand and with metal rim. Deep red by
transmitted light. Subject—The Madness of Lycurgus. Probably
Roman, about third or fourth century A.D. From the collection
of Lord Rothschild. (_To face p. 73._)
IX. ROMAN GLASS FROM GRAVES IN BRITAIN. British Museum.
(1) Jug of pale olive glass, with iridescence. (H. 8-3/8 in.)
From Colchester.
(2) Vase of olive-green glass, with two handles, each ending
in quilled attachments. (H. 9 in.) From Bayford, near
Sittingbourne. (_To face p. 86._)
X. GILT GLASS OF THE CEMETERIES. Fifth century A.D. British
Museum.
(1) Part of a bowl, the sides ornamented with small
medallions of gilt glass. Subjects—Adam and Eve, Sacrifice
of Isaac, Jonas, the Three Children, Daniel, etc. (Max.
dimension, 6-1/2 in.) Found near the Church of St. Severinus,
Cologne.
(2) Disc from base of bowl. (Diam. 3-3/4 in.) Below, Christ,
between Timothy and Hippolytus; above, St. Paul, St. Sixtus,
and St. Laurence, standing between torque columns.
(3) Portraits of Bride and Bridegroom—Orfitus and
Constantia; with figure of Hercules and congratulatory
inscription. (Diam. 4 in.) (_To face p. 91._)
XI. BYZANTINE GLASS, from the Treasury of St. Mark’s, Venice.
(Reproduced from Passini, _Tesoro di S. Marco_.)
(1) ‘Balance-pan’ lamp of clear glass for suspension. On the
silver rim, an invocation to St. Pantaleone by the Bishop of
Iberia. (Diam. 10-1/2 in.)
(2) Ellipsoid lamp, for suspension. Common glass, carved in
high relief with shells, fishes, etc. Silver rim, with
cloisons for jewels and sockets for candles. (Chief diam.
8 in.)
(3) Paten, or more likely ‘balance-pan’ lamp. Greenish glass,
incised with a series of concentric rings. (Diam. 7 in.)
(_To face p. 96._)
XII. CANTHARUS-SHAPED VASE of sky-blue, bubbly glass. (H.
6-1/4 in.) Probably a chalice. _Circa_ fifth century A.D.
Found at Amiens. From the Pourtalès collection. British
Museum. (_To face p. 98._)
XIII. BYZANTINE OR EARLY SARACENIC GLASS, from the Treasury of St.
Mark’s, Venice. (Reproduced from Passini, _Tesoro di S.
Marco_.)
Pear-shaped vase, set with ‘false’ metal spout and handle, to
resemble an ampulla. Carved in low relief, in imitation of
rock-crystal—design of two sheep-like animals amid
conventional foliage. (Glass alone 4 in. in H.)
(_To face p. 101._)
XIV. BYZANTINE OR LATE ROMAN GLASS, from the Treasury of St.
Mark’s, Venice. (Reproduced from Passini, _Tesoro di S.
Marco_.)
_Situla_ of greenish glass, carved in high (detached) relief
with a hunting scene. Below, a raised grating, supported on
rods of glass (_diatretum_ work). H. 11 in.
(_To face p. 102._)
XV. GLASS BEADS. British Museum.
(1) Cylindrical beads with white and yellow pellets: (i) Blue
glass with satyr-like mask; (ii) opaque greenish glass.
Probably from Cyprus. Greek or Phœnician.
(2) Two Chevron beads. _Provenance_ uncertain. Slade
collection.
(3) Three chains of beads, from Frankish tombs in the
Rhine-Moselle district. (_To face p. 108._)
XVI. ANGLO-SAXON GLASS. Prunted Beaker of olive-green glass.
(H. 11-1/8 in.) From burial-mound, Taplow. British Museum.
(_To face p. 111._)
XVII. ANGLO-SAXON GLASS. (1) Conical cup of pale green glass, with
applied threadings. (H. 10-1/4 in.) From Kempston,
Bedfordshire. British Museum.
(2) Drinking-cup of olive-green glass. (H. 8-1/2 in.) From
Faversham, Kent. British Museum (Gibbs Bequest).
(_To face p. 112._)
XVIII. HEDWIG GLASS (so-called). Two views of a cup of nearly
colourless glass (H. about 4 in.), carved in relief with
lion, griffin, and shield. German or Oriental; thirteenth
century, or perhaps earlier. Now mounted on Gothic metal
stand, which is not shown. Germanic Museum, Nuremberg.
(_To face p. 114._)
XIX. MEDIÆVAL GLASS FURNACE. Reproduction of a coloured miniature
from a manuscript, written probably in 1023, of Rabanus Maurus
(_De Originibus Rerum_), preserved in the library at Monte
Cassino. (_To face p. 124._)
XX. GERMAN GLASS, FOURTEENTH AND FIFTEENTH CENTURY. Dark
bluish-green glass, from the Germanic Museum, Nuremberg.
(1) Prunted cup for holding relics.
(2) Wax cover to above, with seal of the Abbey to which it
belonged. (_To face p. 137._)
XXI. Do. do.
(1) Small cup with pap-shaped prunts.
(2) Cup with conical cover, containing relics.
(_To face p. 137._)
XXII. SARACENIC GLASS. Pilgrim bottle; brownish, amber-coloured
thick glass, enamelled and gilt. (H. about 8 in.) On the
flattened back a rose-wheel design. Long preserved at
Würzburg; said to come from Mesopotamia. _Circa_ 1300 A.D.
British Museum. (_To face p. 153._)
XXIII. SARACENIC GLASS. Tall-necked bottle; decorated with enamelled
and gilt medallions, Chinese phœnix, etc. (H. 17-1/2 in.) The
inscription has been read ‘Glory to our Lord the Sultan, the
wise, the just, the warrior King.’ Bought in Cairo. _Circa_
1300 A.D. Victoria and Albert Museum (Myers Bequest).
(_To face p. 154._)
XXIV. SARACENIC GLASS. Victoria and Albert Museum.
(1) Small lamp of clear white glass, a little decayed on
surface. (H. 8-1/4 in.) Enamels of white, red, and yellow
with gold, sparingly applied—horsemen with falcons; gold
frieze on rim and foot. Stated to have come from a Christian
monastery in Syria. Late thirteenth or early fourteenth
century. Myers Bequest.
(2) Vessel for oil. Probably to be suspended in a large
mosque lamp (lantern). (H. 6-1/2 in.) Pale greenish-blue
glass, with remains of the gilding that formerly covered it.
(_To face p. 156._)
XXV. SARACENIC GLASS. Beaker enamelled with frieze of three
polo-players, between two bands with inscription in Arabic,
both in praise of ‘our Lord the Sultan’ (without date or
proper name). About 1300. The silver-gilt foot and cover are
probably Augsburg work of the early sixteenth century. From a
reproduction in water-colours of the original in the _Grüne
Gewölbe_, Dresden. (_To face p. 162._)
XXVI. SARACENIC GLASS. Mosque lamp (H. 16 in.) from Cairo. Clear
white glass with many bubbles. Eight handles for suspension.
Design of lotus-blossom, etc., outlined in opaque red, and
the interstices filled with translucent blue enamel. Early
fourteenth century. Victoria and Albert Museum (Myers
Bequest). (_To face p. 168._)
XXVII. (1) DRINKING-CUP (Diam. 5-1/2 in.) of honey-coloured glass.
In centre, enamelled figure of ‘the angel who serves the wine
to the faithful.’ Angel’s wings and surrounding band, gold
upon a lavender-blue ground. Persian in style, but according
to M. Schefer, possibly made at Ermenas and enamelled at
Aleppo. Probably fifteenth century. British Museum.
(2) HOLLOW SPHERE of honey-coloured enamelled glass.
(Diam. 4 in.) Ornament of chain of mosque lamp. _Provenance_
unknown, but probably from Northern Syria. British Museum.
(_To face p. 172._)
XXVIII. VENETIAN GLASS. The Aldrevandini Beaker. (H. 5-1/8 in.) Thin
clear glass with black specks, enamelled with three shields
bearing the arms of South German towns: (1) Three stag-horns
in fesse, azure; (2) argent, three keys in fesse, gules; (3)
per fesse argent and sable, in chief a bar. Between,
apple-green leaves outlined in white. Some enamelling also
inside. Inscription in Gothic letters. About 1300 A.D.
British Museum. (_To face p. 179._)
XXIX. VENETIAN GLASS. The Berovieri Cup. (H. c. 8-1/2 in.) _Coppa
Nuziale_ (marriage cup) of deep-blue glass, enamelled and
gilt. The heads of bride and bridegroom in medallions.
Between, (1) a procession of knights and ladies approaching
a fountain; (2) bathing in fountain. Attributed to Angelo
Berovieri. About 1440. Museo Civico, Venice.
(_To face p. 194._)
XXX. VENETIAN GLASS. (1) Lamp for suspension, enamelled with studs
of white on coloured ground. (H. 11 in.) Shield with _stemma_
of Tiepolo family. Early sixteenth century. Museo Civico,
Venice.
(2) Stemless cup of thin clear glass. (H. 5-1/2 in.)
Decorated with scrolls, lions, and birds, in ‘painted’
enamel. About 1450. Dug up while excavating the foundations
of the new Campanile. Museo Civico, Venice.
(_To face p. 199._)
XXXI. VENETIAN GLASS. Flower-vase. (H. 11 in.) Transparent,
colourless glass, slightly greyish, with tendency to
deliquescence on surface: threading and studs of
cobalt-blue. Probably sixteenth century. British Museum.
(Slade, _ex_ Bernal collection.) (_To face p. 200._)
XXXII. VENETIAN GLASS. Spherical vase (H., with ‘made-up’ foot,
9-1/2 in.) of opaque white glass, decorated with gilt scrolls
and bosses and a pair of rudely drawn mermaids. Sixteenth
century. British Museum. (Slade, _ex_ D’Azeglio collection.)
(_To face p. 203._)
XXXIII. VENETIAN GLASS. Pilgrim’s bottle. (H. 6-1/2 in.) Design
(Cupid fishing, and Venus and Anchises) painted in blue on
opaque white (_lattimo_) ground. Early sixteenth century.
Museo Civico, Venice. (_To face p. 204._)
XXXIV. VENETIAN GLASS, enamelled and gilt. Early sixteenth century.
British Museum.
(1) Plate of thin glass. (Diam. 7 in.) In centre a shield
with oak tree, green and gold on blue ground. (? Rovere
arms.) Round margin a ring of delicate pattern in powder
gold. Early sixteenth century. (Slade collection.)
(2) Tazza of thin glass. (Diam. 6 in.) Coat of arms in
lozenge in centre, surrounded by ring with flowers in oval
medallions—apple-green, dull red, blue and yellow enamels.
Powder gold band round margin. (Slade, _ex_ Bernal
collection.) (_To face p. 214._)
XXXV. FRENCH GLASS OF RENAISSANCE. British Museum. (Slade
collection.)
(1) Statuette of Louis XIII. or XIV. (H. 4-1/4 in.) Opaque
white glass with coloured enamels. Probably made at Nevers.
Seventeenth century.
(2) Statuette of man with muff. (H. of figure, 5 in.) Opaque
white, porcelain-like glass, on a copper base. On stand of
white Dresden china, partly gilt.
(3) Small burette (H. 5 in.) of dark greenish-blue
transparent glass; the body and neck splashed with green,
white, and red enamels. Gilt berry-like bosses on body.
Probably sixteenth century. (_To face p. 233._)
XXXVI. SPANISH GLASS. Victoria and Albert Museum.
(1) Vase of pale bottle-green glass; four handles with
quilled edges. (H. 6-1/2 in.) From the South of Spain.
Sixteenth or seventeenth century.
(2) Jug of white transparent glass (H. 8-1/2 in.), made at
S. Ildefonso.
(3) Vase of transparent glass, slightly greenish. (H. 6 in.)
Two handles with quilled edges. From the South of Spain.
Sixteenth or seventeenth century. (_To face p. 245._)
XXXVII. GERMAN GLASS. Roemer of green glass; berry prunts on waist;
the foot built up of glass stringing. _Circa_ 1600. Germanic
Museum, Nuremberg. (_To face p. 254._)
XXXVIII. GERMAN GLASS FURNACE. Sixteenth century. From Agricola,
_De Re Metallica_, Basle, 1556. (_To face p. 260._)
XXXIX. GERMAN GLASS. _Willkomm Humpen_, enamelled in colours with
the _Reichs-adler_. On the wings, as recorded by an
inscription on the back, the arms of the various members of
the Holy Roman Empire. Dated 1656. Greenish glass; below
margin, a ring of ‘powdered’ gold, between beading of white
and blue enamel. British Museum (Henderson Bequest).
(_To face p. 264._)
XL. GERMAN GLASS. British Museum.
(1) Beaker of clear white glass. (H. 5-1/2 in.) Enamelled
with double eagle, white and blue, with yellow beaks and
claws; at the back a sprig of lily-of-the-valley. Dated 1596.
From the Bernal collection.
(2) Jug of pale purple glass (H. 8 in.) with pewter lid.
Enamelled with a white dog pursuing a red stag and fox. In
addition green, blue, and yellow enamels. Dated 1595. From
the Slade collection. (_To face p. 267._)
XLI. GERMAN GLASS. _Willkomm Humpen._ Enamelled in colours with
hunting scene, the game being driven into net. About 1600.
British Museum. (_To face p. 268._)
XLII. GERMAN GLASS. Covered beaker of clear white glass. (H. with
cover 6-3/4 in.) Engraved with design of _amorini_ dancing
among vines. The metal knob of cover is enamelled and gilt,
and on the interior button are enamelled the arms of the
Archbishop of Trèves, with the following inscription:—Joan
Hugo D.G. Arc. Trev. PR. EL. EP. SP. Early eighteenth century.
(_To face p. 283._)
XLIII. DUTCH GLASS. Beaker in the form of a _roemer_. (H. 9 in.) On
the bowl, in medallions, heads symbolising the four seasons,
scratched with the diamond. The waist, decorated with berry
prunts, showing remains of gilding. On this part is scratched
(in English) ‘August the 18th, 1663,’ and the letters H./W.E.
between bay branches. On the foot a landscape with hunting
scene. British Museum. (_To face p. 296._)
XLIV. ENGLISH WINE-GLASSES. British Museum.
(1) Wine-glass, early eighteenth century. (H. 8-3/4 in.) The
hollow knop of the moulded stem is decorated with prunts and
encloses a sixpence of Queen Anne (dated 1707).
(2) Jacobite wine-glass with opaque twisted stem. (H.
7-3/4 in.) On the bowl is engraved a portrait of the Young
Pretender, inscribed ‘_Cognoscunt me mei_’; at the back are
the words _Premium Virtutis_ under a crown.
(3) Jacobite wine-glass with air-twisted stem. Round the bowl
are engraved the words ‘Immortal Memory’; above, a band of
vine-leaves, and below, fleurs-de-lis and roses. Presented by
Mr. A. Hartshorne. (_To face p. 327._)
XLV. ENGLISH FLINT GLASS. Victoria and Albert Museum.
(1) Standing cup and cover (H. 12 in.) on square, stepped
foot. Carved in relief with gadroons descending spirally. End
of eighteenth century. Presented by Mr. H. B. Lennard.
(2) Bowl standing on square base. (H. 8-1/2 in.) The whole of
the surface facetted; the under surface of the foot cut into
square compartments. End of eighteenth century. Presented by
Mr. H. B. Lennard. (_To face p. 332._)
XLVI. PERSIAN GLASS. Tall-necked vase of colourless glass; body
shaped in a mould; _appliqué_ stringings on foot. Taken from
a tomb at Baku. Vincent Robinson collection.
(_To face p. 338._)
XLVII. PERSIAN GLASS. Victoria and Albert Museum. Seventeenth or
eighteenth century.
(1) Tall-necked, pear-shaped vase, the surface spirally
ribbed, of deep blue transparent glass. (H. 11 in.)
(2) Cruet-shaped vase of clear white glass. (H. 9 in.) From
the Richard collection.
(3) Perfume sprinkler, with curved neck and barnacle-shaped
lip. Blue transparent glass, the surface spirally ribbed.
(H. 12 in.) (_To face p. 340._)
XLVIII. INDIAN GLASS. Indian Museum. Vase or basin with
wide-spreading lip. (H. 5-3/4 in.) Milky, semi-transparent
glass; the ground gilt, surrounding white flowers, with
pistils of red enamel. _Provenance_ unknown. (Delhi
district?) (_To face p. 343._)
XLIX. CHINESE GLASS. Victoria and Albert Museum.
(1) Bowl of mottled green glass with purple markings,
imitating jade. (H. 2-7/8 in.) Eighteenth century. From the
Bernal collection.
(2) Spindle-shaped vase of orange, ‘tortoise-shell’ glass.
(H. 7-1/2 in.) The stopper of silver, inlaid with Chinese
characters; the base European.
(3) Small tripod vase of mottled yellow glass, in form of
incense-burner. (H. 3-3/4 in.) Eighteenth century.
(_To face p. 350._)
SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY OF WORKS ON GLASS
AGRICOLA (GEORG): _De Re Metallica_ (last chapter of work). Basle, 1556.
APPERT (L.) ET HENRIVAUX: _Verre et Verrerie_. Paris, 1894.
APPERT (L.): _Notes sur les verres des Vitraux Anciens_. Paris, 1896.
BAPST (A.): _Chinesische Glasarbeiten; Zeitschrift für Bildende Kunst_,
1885.
BATE (PERCY): _English Table-Glass_. No date. (1904?)
BIRINGUCCIO (V.): _De la Pirotechnia_. Venice, 1540.
BLANCOURT (HAUDICQUER DE): _L’Art de la Verrerie_. Paris, 1697.
BONTEMPS (G.):—
_Guide du Verrier_. Paris, 1868.
_Exposé des moyens employés pour la fabrication des Verres
Filigranés_. 1845.
BORDONI: _L’Arte Vetraria in Altare_. Savona, 1884.
BOSC D’ANTIC (P.): _Mémoires sur l’Art de la Verrerie_. Paris, 1780.
BOUTELLIER (L’ABBÉ): _Histoire des Gentilshommes Verriers de Nevers_.
BRENT (JOHN): ‘On Chevron Beads.’ _Archæologia_, vol. xlv.
BRINCKMANN (JUSTUS): Various Catalogues, etc., of the Hamburg Museum.
BUCHER (B.): _Die Glassammlung des K.K. Oesterreich. Museum_. Vienna,
1888.
BUSHELL (S. W.):—
_Oriental Ceramic Art_. New York, 1899.
_Chinese Art_, vol. ii. (South Kensington Art Handbooks). 1906.
BUSSELIN (D.): _Les Célèbres Verreries de Venise_. Venice, 1846.
CECCHETTI:—
_Delle Origini dell’ Arte Vetraria Muranese_. R. Institute Veneto,
1872.
_Monographie dell’ Arte Vetraria._ Venice, 1874.
CZIHAK (E. VON): _Schlesische Gläser_. Breslau, 1891.
DALTON (O. M.):—
_Catalogue of Early Christian Antiquities in the British
Museum—Cemetery Glasses_. 1901.
‘Gilded Glass of Catacombs.’ _Archæological Journal_, 1901.
DEVILLE (A.): _Histoire de l’Art de la Verrerie dans l’Antiquité_.
Paris, 1873.
DOBBS (H. C.): ‘Glass-blowers of North-west Provinces.’ _Journal of
Indian Art_, vol. vii.
ERACLIUS: _see_ HERACLIUS.
FILLON (B.): _L’Art de Terre chez les Poitevins_. Niort, 1864.
FIORAVANTI (L.): _Dello Specchio di Scienza Universale_, Bk. vii. cap.
29. Venice, 1567.
FOURCAUD (L. DE): _Émile Gallé_. Paris, 1903.
FOWLER (J.): ‘On the Process of Decay in Glass.’ _Archæologia_, vol.
xlvi.
FRANKS (SIR A. W.):—
_Guide to Glass Room in British Museum_, 1888.
_Art Treasures of United Kingdom. Vitreous Art._ 1858.
FRIEDRICH (C.): _Die Altdeutschen Gläser_. Nürnberg, 1884.
FROEHNER (W.): _La Verrerie Antique_. _Collection Charvet_, 1879.
GARNIER (E.):—
_Histoire de la Verrerie et de l’Émaillerie_. Tours, 1886.
_Spitzer Catalogue_, vol. iii. ‘La Verrerie.’
GARRUCCI (P. R.):—
_Storia dell’ Arte Christiana_, vol. iii. 1876.
_Vetri ornati di Figure in Oro._ 1858 and 1864.
GARZONI (T.): _Piazza Universale di tutte le professioni del Mondo_.
Discorso lxiv. Venice, 1585.
GERSPACH: _L’Art de la Verrerie_. Paris, 1885.
GRIFFITH (F.): _Egypt Exploration Fund_. Tanis, Part ii. 1888.
HALLEN (REV. A.): ‘Glass-making in Sussex, etc.’ _Scottish Antiquary_,
1893.
HARTSHORNE (ALBERT): _Old English Glasses_. 1897.
HAVARD (H.): _Les Arts de l’Ameublement_. _La Verrerie._ Paris, 1894.
HERACLIUS or ERACLIUS: _De Artibus et Coloribus Romanorum_. Eitelberger
von Edelberg: _Quellenschriften für Kunstgeschichte_, vol. iv.
HIRTH (F.): _Chinesische Studien_; _Zur Geschichte des Glases in
China_. Leipsic, 1890. And other papers.
D’HOLBACH (BARON)?: _Art de la Verrerie, de Neri, Merret et Kunckel_.
Paris, 1752.
D’HONDT (P.): _L’Art de la Verrerie_. Liége, 1891.
HOUDOY (J.): _Verrerie à la façon de Venise_. Paris, 1873.
KUNCKEL (J.): _Ars Vitraria Experimentalis_. 1679.
LABARTE (J.):—
_La Collection Debruge Duménil_. Paris, 1847.
_Histoire des Arts Industriels_, vol. iv. Paris, 1866.
LACROIX (P.): _Les Arts au Moyen Âge et à l’Époque de la Renaissance_.
Paris, 1869.
LANE-POOLE (S.):—
_The Art of the Saracens in Egypt_. London, 1886.
_Arabic Glass Weights in British Museum_. 1891.
LAYARD (SIR A. H.): _Nineveh and its Remains_. 1853.
LAZARI (V.): _Notizia delle Opere d’Arte della Raccolta Correr_.
Venice, 1859.
LOBMEYR (L.): _Die Glas-industrie_. Stuttgart, 1874.
LOYSEL (C.): _Essai sur la Verrerie_. Paris, 1800. (Written earlier.)
MATHESIUS: _Sarepta oder Bergpostil_ (Sermon xv.). Nürnberg, 1562.
MERRET (C.): _The Art of Glass of Neri translated into English_.
London, 1662.
MILANESI (G.): _Tre Trattatelli dell’ Arte del Vetro per Mosaici_.
(Fifteenth century MSS.) 1864.
MINUTOLI (H. DE): _Ueber der Anfertigung der farbigen Gläser bei den
Römern_. Berlin, 1836.
MOLINIER (E.): _La Peinture sous Verre_. _Spitzer Catalogue_, vol. iii.
NAPLES: _Description of Museo Borbonico_. _Glass_, vols. v., xi., and
xv.
NERI (A.): _L’Arte Vetraria_. 1612.
NESBITT (A.):—
_Catalogue of Slade Collection of Glass_. Privately printed, 1871.
_Catalogue of Glass Vessels in South Kensington Museum_, 1878.
_Glass_ (South Kensington Art Handbooks), 1875.
‘Opus Sectile in Glass.’ _Archæologia_, vol. xlv.
_Encyclopædia Britannica_, article ‘Glass.’ 1879.
OWEN (H.): _Ceramic Art in Bristol_ (chapter on Bristol Glass). 1873.
PASSINI (A.): _Il Tesoro di San Marco_. Venice, 1886.
PELIGOT (M. E.): _La Verre, Histoire et Fabrication_. 1876.
PELLAT (APSLEY):—
_Curiosities of Glass-making_. London, 1849.
_Memoir on the Origin, etc., of Glass-making_. London, 1821.
PELLETIER: _Les Verriers du Lyonnais_. 1887.
PETRIE (FLINDERS):—
_Burlington Fine Arts Club; Introduction to Catalogue of Egyptian
Exhibition_, 1895.
_Tell-el-Amarna_. _Egypt Exploration Fund_. 1894.
PINCHART (A.): _Les Fabriques des Verres de Venise, d’Anvers et de
Bruxelles au XVI^e. et au XVII^e. siècles_. _Bulletins des
Commissions Royales_. Bruxelles, 1882.
PLINIUS SECUNDUS (CAIUS): _Historia Naturalis_, Bk. xxxvi. caps. 44-47.
PORTER (G. R.): ‘Glass and Porcelain.’ _Lardner’s Cabinet
Encyclopædia_. London, 1832.
POWELL (H. J.):—
_Principles of Glass-making_. London, 1883.
_Encyclopædia Britannica_, article ‘Glass.’ 1902.
READ (C. H.):—
‘Glass in South Saxon Graves.’ _Archæologia_, vol. lv.
‘On a Saracenic Goblet of Enamelled Glass.’ _Archæologia_, vol. lviii.
RIAÑO (J. F.): _Industrial Arts in Spain_, Part ii. (South Kensington
Handbooks). 1879.
SANTI (M.): _Origini dell’ Arte Vetraria in Venezia e Murano_.
SAUZAY (A.):—
_La Verrerie depuis les Temps les plus reculés_. Paris, 1868.
SAUZAY (A.):—
_Marvels of Glass-making_. (Translation of above.) London, 1870.
SCHEBEK (E.): _Böhmens Glasindustrie und Glashandel_. Prague, 1878.
SCHMORANZ (G.): _Old Oriental Gilt and Enamelled Vessels_. German and
English Editions. Vienna and London, 1899.
SCHUERMANS (H.): _The Wanderings of the Muranese and Altarist
Glass-workers. Eleven Letters_. _Bulletins des Commissions Royales_.
Bruxelles, 1883-1891.
_Spitzer Catalogue_. _See_ GARNIER and MOLINIER.
THEOPHILUS: _Diversarum Artium Schedula_. Eitelberger von Edelberg.
_Quellenschriften für Kunstgeschichte_, vol. viii. Vienna, 1874.
URE (A.): _Dictionary of Arts_, article ‘Glass.’ 1853.
VOPEL (H.): _Die Altchristlichen Goldgläser_. Freiberg, 1899.
ZANETTI (V.):—
_Monographia della Vetraria Veneziana_. Venice, 1873.
_Museo Civico di Murano_; _Guida di Murano_. Venice, 1866.
KEY TO THE PRECEDING LIST
_Egyptian_, _etc._ Griffith, Layard, Petrie.
_Greco-Roman and Roman._ Deville, Froehner, Fowler, Minutoli, Naples
Museum, Nesbitt, Pliny.
_Early Christian_, _Byzantine_, _Anglo-Saxon_, _etc._ Brent, Dalton,
Garrucci, Heraclius, Passini, Read, Theophilus, Vopel.
_Saracenic and Perso-Indian._ Lane-Poole, Dobbs, Read, Schmoranz.
_Venetian_ (Murano and Altare). Biringuccio, Bontemps, Bordoni,
Busselin, Cecchetti, Fioravanti, Garzoni, Houdoy, Labarte, Lazari,
Neri, Pinchart, Santi, Schuermans, Zanetti.
_French and Spanish._ Boutellier, Fillon, Fourcaud, Gamier, Gerspach,
Pelletier, Riaño.
_German._ Agricola, Brinckmann, Von Czihak, Friedrich, Kunckel,
Lobmeyr, Mathesius, Schebek.
_English._ Bate, Hallen, Hartshorne, Merret, Owen, Pellat.
_Chinese._ Bapst, Bushell, Hirth.
_Technical._ Appert, Blancourt, Bontemps, Bosc d’Antic, D’Holbach,
Kunckel, Lobmeyr, Loysel, Merret, Neri, Peligot, Pellat, Porter,
Powell, Ure.
_General and historical._ Brinckmann, Franks, Garnier, Gerspach,
Havard, Labarte, Lacroix, Nesbitt, Sauzay.
GLASS
CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTION
Glass is a substance in so many ways connected with the conveniences
and amenities of our daily life, and the word calls up so many varied
associations, that I must here at the very beginning make clear with
what a comparatively small proportion of the manifold applications of
the substance I have to deal.
In the first place, this is an art history, so that with methods of
manufacture and practical uses we are only concerned so far as they may
influence or help to explain points of artistic interest. Again, even
on the artistic side, it is not with every branch of the varied
applications of glass that we shall be occupied in this work. By an
anomaly of the English language, whose vocabulary for matters connected
with the arts is so strangely deficient, we have come to understand by
the term ‘glass,’ when used without further explanation, what is called
in the trade ‘hollow ware,’ the _verrerie_ of the French; in other
words—vessels of glass. The term may also be extended to include
various minor applications of the material—beads, small ornaments,
etc., what the French call _verroterie_. But the application of glass
to windows, especially when coloured and stained glass is in question,
to say nothing of work in mosaic, is usually, although not always, held
to lie outside this narrower connotation of the word.
Now it happens that for us this restriction is in every way convenient.
For though the material basis is the same, it is evident that both the
artist who works in mosaic and the designer of stained windows are
concerned, each in his department, with artistic problems only
incidentally connected with the material in which they work. In other
words, the art element in both these crafts only becomes prominent at a
stage when the actual preparation of the glass is completed. It is,
however, certainly a pity that there is no English word which would not
only clearly connote the class of objects with which I have here to
deal, but which would at the same time distinctly comprise nothing
beyond.
I have now explained the somewhat restricted and artificial sense of
the word glass that I propose to accept in this work. But for a moment
let us pass to the other extreme, and going beyond the ordinary
connotation of the term include in it the glazes of pottery—the word
‘glaze’ is in its origin the same as glass—as well as the many forms
of enamel. In all these cases we are dealing with substances of similar
composition. They may all probably be traced back to a common origin,
so that from an evolutionary point of view we have here an instance of
the development of the complex and varied from the simple and single.
Looking at the question in another way, the art of the enameller, using
the term in a restricted sense, may be held to be subsidiary both to
that of the potter and of the glass-worker; while many of the problems
that arise in treating of the glazes of fictile wares—questions as to
fusibility, or as to the colours employed and the changes of these
colours during the firing—turn up again in the manufacture of glass.
We shall see that experience gained in following the processes of one
art may serve to throw light upon the difficulties and problems of the
other.
Historically the connection between glass and pottery is not so close.
In some degree the prevalence of one art has tended to oust the other,
or to relegate it to an inferior position. The Greeks, who carried the
potter’s art to such perfection, knew little about glass—it was long
an exotic substance for them. The Romans, on the other hand, who in the
first centuries of our era first fully appreciated and developed the
capacities of glass, produced little pottery of artistic interest. In
the sixteenth century, in Umbria and Tuscany, where the finest majolica
was made, we hear nothing of the manufacture of glass, while on the
other hand the fayence of Venice, at this time pre-occupied with her
glass, was of subsidiary importance. If we turn to the home of
porcelain, in China glass has always held a subordinate position, while
in Japan it was until recent days practically unknown.
Were a comparison to be made between the development of the various
minor arts, it would be difficult to find a wider contrast than that
between the history of porcelain and that of glass. The knowledge of
porcelain was confined for nearly a thousand years to China, the
country where it was first made, and where it was slowly brought to
perfection. Let loose, as it were, in the West early in the eighteenth
century, it had then a short period of glory, but before the end of the
century the art had already fallen upon evil days. The manufacture of
glass, on the other hand, had long been carried on in Egypt, and
perhaps in other Eastern lands, by a primitive process, although it
only became an article of general use after the discovery of the
blowing-iron. When and where this discovery was made we do not
know—perhaps somewhere in Syria or Mesopotamia, in the third or second
century before Christ. The art of blowing glass was known, no doubt, if
not fully developed, at the time when the kingdoms of the Ptolemies and
of the Seleucidæ fell under the rule of the Romans. By them it was
before long brought to perfection and carried into every corner of the
West, so that by the second or third century of our era the production
of glass in Europe was probably greater than at any subsequent time, at
least until quite recent days. Nor was the art of glass-making
completely extinguished by ‘the advance of the barbarians.’ Indeed,
some of the Germanic tribes not impossibly brought with them a
knowledge of the process not only of preparing but also of blowing
glass, picked up on their journeyings through East Europe, or perhaps
even learned in Western Asia. This was an instance of the passage to
the North and West of the arts of civilisation, by what we may call the
back-road of Europe, in opposition to the high-roads that led directly
from Italy by way of the Rhone and the Rhine.
But in the West the manufacture, though continuously carried on in many
spots, was after the fall of the Western Empire relegated to the
woods,—for nearly a thousand years little glass was produced of any
artistic interest. Indeed, but few examples of this forest or green
glass of the Middle Ages have survived to our time. During all this
long interval, in one direction only, in the West, was any advance
made. Within this period falls the great development of stained glass:
we must turn to the glorious windows of the cathedrals of France and
other Western lands, to see what the glass-workers of the time were
capable of producing. In the East, on the other hand, in the lands
ruled from Constantinople or influenced by Byzantine civilisation, what
we know of the glass of the early Middle Ages is almost confined to the
mosaic coverings of the walls of the contemporary churches. But just as
distinctly as the glass in the windows of the Gothic churches, this
mosaic work, for the reason we have already given, falls outside our
limits.
It was not till the end of the twelfth century that any important
advance was made in our narrower department of ‘hollow ware.’ Among
the many beautiful things made during that glorious season of
artistic production that had its start about this time in Egypt (or
perhaps, rather, in the lands between the Persian Gulf and the
Mediterranean)—except it be the inlaid metal work—there is nothing
that now interests us so much as the enamelled glass, the beautiful
ware that culminated in the magnificent Cairene mosque lamps of the
thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. The art of enamelling on glass
passed over to Venice in the fifteenth century, perhaps earlier, and
there in the next century the manufacture of the famous _cristallo_
was finally achieved, and complete mastery was obtained in the
working of this pure white glass. A fresh start was now given to the
industry in the north by means of the Venetian glass-workers, who
were sought for in every country to teach their new methods.
In Germany alone did some of the traditions of the old forest-workers
of ‘green-glass’ survive. By the end of the seventeenth century the
German glass, in some respects to be regarded as a compromise between
the old and new, had become the most important in Europe. For a hundred
years the products of ‘the mountain fringe of Bohemia’ held the premier
position, but towards the end of the eighteenth century this place was
taken by the facetted flint-glass of England. It is certainly
remarkable that it is only of quite recent years that any such
prominent position could be claimed for France, which heretofore had
been content to follow in the wake first of Venice and then of Germany
and of England. At the present day, however, this at least may be
said—that France is almost the only country where any really artistic
work in glass, apart from the reproduction of old patterns and old
methods, is being produced.
This hasty sketch of the history of glass-making will help us to
understand why it is that in following the development of the art in so
many lands, and for a period of more than three thousand years, there
is no need to linger for any time except at a few of the more important
_étapes_. Indeed such a procedure is forced upon us, for much of the
road is quite barren, other parts are unexplored, while for whole
stages we pass through prosaic districts where we find little of
artistic merit to detain us.
The periods, then, of real importance in the history of glass, either
from the _cultur-historisch_ or from a purely artistic point of view,
are separated by long intervals, during which little of interest was
produced. The primitive glass of Egypt, the varied productions of the
first centuries of the Roman Empire, the enamelled glass of the
Saracens, and the Venetian glass of the Renaissance—this exhausts all
that we find either of commanding historic interest or of superlative
artistic merit. What follows—the German and the Netherlandish glass of
the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries—is still of some importance
under both these heads. I can hardly say so much of the English glass
of the eighteenth century; but this glass must not be neglected—it is
English, and it is highly prized by many enthusiastic collectors.
It will be seen that there is a long gap between the first and second
of our critical periods—between the beginning of the primitive
Egyptian and the earliest Roman glass. This gap will be filled, in some
measure, by some account of the rare surviving specimens of glass that
can claim an Assyrian origin, of the glass pastes of the Mycenæan age,
and of the few examples of glass that can be strictly classed as Greek
of the classical age. So again of the second long hiatus—the interval
of nearly a thousand years between the period of the Roman glass and
that of the Saracens,—this may be partly filled by the few scanty
pieces that have come down to us from Sassanian and Byzantine times. To
this period belongs also the glass of the Germanic tribes of northern
Europe, above all that of our Anglo-Saxon ancestors.
Some notice must also be taken of a few districts situated on bypaths,
of the glass from countries that lie away from the main centres of
production—these latter centres, I may note, until comparatively
recent times are mostly to be found in close connection with the basin
of the Mediterranean. To these outlying districts we must finally turn
to examine the glass of Persia, of India, and above all the glass of
China.
An interesting chapter, nay, a separate work, might be devoted to the
classification and history of a class of objects of which the
manufacture has been carried on continuously and with few changes from
the time of the Middle Empire in Egypt—of beads, I mean, and other
allied applications of glass, included in the French term _verroterie_.
But, however great the claims to attention of such objects, their
interest is rather archæological than artistic, and it will be
sufficient to treat of them incidentally along with the, for us, more
important class of ‘hollow ware’ produced with the aid of the
glass-blower’s tube.
PROPERTIES AND COMPOSITION OF GLASS
Christopher Merret, our earliest English writer on glass, sets down the
properties of the material under twenty-six heads, ‘by which we may
easily differentiate it from all other bodies.’ From these I will
select some four or five which will be sufficient for our purpose.
Thus, of glass, he says: ‘’Tis a concrete of salt and sand or stones.
’Tis artificial. It melts in a strong fire. When melted ’tis tenacious
and sticks together.... When melted it cleaves to iron, etc. ’Tis
ductile whilst red-hot, and fashionable into any form, but not
malleable, and it may be blown into a hollowness’ (_Art of Glass_,
1662). Here we have briefly expressed the real _differentiæ_ of glass.
It is rather by these properties than by any virtue of transparency or
of definite chemical composition that glass is to be distinguished from
all other bodies; and it is only by duly taking advantage of these
properties that the preparation of a vessel of glass is rendered
possible.
In passing from a liquid to a solid state there intervenes a viscous
stage when the glass may be gathered at the end of an iron rod; the
ductile, tenacious mass may now be drawn out into long threads, whose
length and fineness are only limited by the difficulty of maintaining
the requisite temperature. Again, if the rod upon which the mass is
gathered is hollow, the glass may be blown out into a vesicle or bulb,
the starting-point from which an endless variety of objects, bottles,
cups, tubes, or even flat sheets of glass, may be subsequently formed.
Until advantage was taken of this remarkable property of glass—its
capability, I mean, of being blown out into a hollow vesicle when in a
viscid condition—the art of the glass-maker was in a primitive stage.
We may compare the glass prepared without the aid of the
blowing-tube—that of the ancient Egyptians, for instance—to the
pottery made by hand before the invention of the potter’s wheel.
In dealing with the practical side of our subject—the materials from
which glass is made, how these materials are first fritted and then
fused together, and how the fused mass is subsequently dealt with—the
best plan will be to approach the questions in each case from the point
of view of the time and country. But as, on the one hand, for classical
times, our sources of information for these practical details are but
scanty, and as, on the other, I am not concerned with the industrial
developments of the nineteenth century, it will be well to postpone any
fuller treatment of such matters until I come to speak of the glass of
late Mediæval and Renaissance times. I shall then be able to make use
of contemporary accounts which will throw light on the processes of
manufacture.
A few preliminary notes on the chemical and physical properties of
glass may, however, not be out of place.
Glass, Merret tells us, is ‘a concrete of salt and sand or stones.’
This, in modern scientific language, we should express by saying that
it is a combination of silica with an alkali. But these substances
alone are not enough. You cannot make a glass fit for practical use
from a pure quartz sand with the addition of nothing else than a salt
of potash or soda. Such a glass—a simple alkaline silicate—would
indeed be transparent, but it would be difficult to work and very
fragile. In all cases there is need of a second base, and this, to
speak generally, should be either lime or oxide of lead. The latter
base we may for the present neglect; speaking generally, it is the
presence of lime that gives the working qualities and the requisite
toughness. These, then, are the essential materials for the preparation
of glass. Other substances may be present; alumina, for example, or one
or other of the oxides of iron, but as a rule the presence of these
latter bases is not desired—the glass would be better without them.
Putting aside, then, for the present the glass in which lead is a
constituent, as well as that in which the soda is replaced by potash,
it is remarkable how little difference of composition we find in
examples of glass of the most divergent origin. Let us compare the
composition of a Roman ‘lachrymatory’ with that of a piece of modern
English plate-glass. In a hundred parts we find—
Silica. Soda. Lime. Iron Oxide. Alumina.
Roman lachrymatory 71·5 16·5 8 1 2
English Plate-glass 72 17 6 2 2
These examples are indeed two extreme terms of a long but continuous
series. A sample of Saracenic glass of the fourteenth or of Venetian
glass of the sixteenth century, would yield on analysis much the same
result.[1]
This, then, may be regarded as the normal composition of such glass as
I shall have to deal with in this history. The main question has
generally been—How can the sand or silica, the premier element in
glass, be best converted into a substance which shall in external
aspect resemble as closely as possible the native rock crystal (itself
pure silica), but which at the same time shall be not only fusible, but
after fusing pass on cooling through a plastic condition when it may be
expanded into a vesicle and otherwise worked up into various shapes?
Long practical experience has shown that this can be best effected by
adding to the sand materials containing both soda and lime, and as far
as possible nothing beyond these bases. A glass thus compounded we may
take as our normal type, but, as I have said, the soda may in certain
cases be replaced by potash and the lime by lead oxide.
Silica in any case is the essential element in glass, and in any normal
glass there may be present from 60 to 75 per cent. If, however, the
bases with which it is combined have a high combining number—and this
is especially the case with lead—the percentage of silica may fall
below the former figure. Thus, in a bottle glass with 12 per cent. of
iron oxide and alumina[2] the proportion is reduced to 54 per cent.,
and in a flint glass with 43 per cent. of lead oxide there is only 45
per cent. of silica.
It was once the fashion among English writers on glass to classify the
substance under the heads of crown-glass, bottle-glass, broad-glass,
plate-glass, flint-glass, etc.; but such a classification, not very
logical in itself, would be of no use to us.[3]
Glass, of course, varies in optical properties, in hardness, and in
fusibility, but I do not think that any useful classification could be
based directly on these properties. But there is one distinction of the
greatest importance technically and geographically, and this is between
the glass of maritime countries in which the alkali is soda, and that
of inland and forest districts where the soda is replaced by potash. In
the first group, by far the most important—I have indeed regarded such
glass as the normal type—may, it would seem, be placed not only the
‘primitive’ glass of the Eastern Mediterranean, but probably all the
glass of the Romans. To it belongs also the glass of the Saracens and
the greater part of the artistic glass of the Renaissance, including
the Venetian glass, although in this last the soda is often in part
replaced by an appreciable quantity of potash. The potash group, on the
other hand, includes the old _voirre à fougère_ of the French and the
_wald-glas_ of the Germans. In addition, almost the whole of the glass
of higher quality made in later days in Germany and in the Bohemian
borderlands belongs essentially to this last class. Finally, it may be
mentioned that in the case of the abnormal family where the lime is
replaced by oxide of lead, the alkali is invariably potash. Of this
family our English flint-glass is the most important member.
With regard to the hardness of glass, Merret mentions as the thirteenth
property possessed by that substance, ‘that it only receives sculpture
or cutting from a _Diamond_ or _Emery_ stone.’ But such a statement
would be likely to give an exaggerated idea of the hardness of glass.
If we take the scale of hardness used by the mineralogist, it will be
found that there are few kinds of glass that do not fall between the
fifth and sixth divisions of that scale. In other words, it would be
difficult to find a specimen of glass on which a crystal of apatite
(phosphate of lime) would make any impression, whereas all glass in
ordinary use is readily scratched by felspar. It is possible, however,
that some kinds of Bohemian glass may equal the latter mineral in
hardness; it is indeed a common statement that certain Bohemian or
German ‘combustion-tubes’ will strike fire with steel. On the other
hand, the presence of lead tends to make a soft glass; our cut flint is
perceptibly softer than common window-glass, and perhaps the most
important defect of the paste used to imitate precious stones—such
paste may contain as much as 50 per cent. of lead oxide—is to be found
in its comparative softness.
At the same time, the greater the amount of lead in a glass, the
greater its dispersive power on the light that passes through it. Hence
the brilliancy and fire of flint-glass, and still more of artificial
gems.
Apart from the varieties containing lead, samples of glass differ
little in weight; the specific gravity may range between 2·4 and 2·8.
That of flint-glass, on the other hand, varies from 3 to 3·8; indeed in
some optical glasses containing a large percentage of lead, and again
in the paste used for false jewellery, the specific gravity may be as
high as 4·5 or even 5.
The high melting-point, or more definitely the high softening-point, of
certain kinds of Bohemian and German glass, makes them invaluable in
the laboratory of the chemist. On the other hand, the ready fusibility
of glass containing lead was, as we shall see, one of the causes that
promoted the adoption of such a glass in our furnaces.
Thus we find that the potash-lime glass of Bohemia, containing a high
percentage of silica, excels in hardness and resistance to heat; on the
other hand, the various kinds of glass containing lead are soft and
easily fusible, and at the same time they combine a high specific
gravity with a wide dispersive power. What we may call the maritime or
soda-lime glass takes an intermediate place in all these respects. This
is indeed an additional reason for regarding this great family of
‘Mediterranean’ glass as the normal type.
The two essential elements, then, required by the glass-maker are, in
the first place, silica, and secondly an alkali, in each case as pure
as possible, and in a convenient form for mixing and fusing together. I
do not propose here to do more than indicate the source of these
materials.
The silica has at all times been derived either from solid quartz,
whether in the form of rock crystal or of the white pebbles from the
beds of Alpine rivers, or more often from sand obtained either by
excavation or from the seashore.
In the case of the alkali, the maritime people of the South extracted
their soda, for the most part, from the ashes of certain plants growing
in salt marshes near the sea. Most of these maritime plants belong to
the natural order of the Chenopodiaceæ, the goose-foot or spinach
tribe, and we find among them various species of Salsola, Chenopodium,
Salicornia, etc. These plants were all included in old days under the
vague name of _kali_. The roughly lixiviated ashes exported from Spain
were known in the trade as _barilla_; those from the Levant as
_roquetta_.[4] In other instances the impure alkaline carbonates were
found ready at hand—as in the case of the natron deposits not far from
Cairo. In the North the principal source of soda was till recent days
the _varech_ or kelp, cast up on the west coast of France and of
Scotland.
The inland folk, on the other hand, had to find the alkali for their
glass in the ashes of plants. This ‘potash’ was obtained by lixiviating
the ashes of various trees and bushes—in Germany the ashes of
beechwood, in France those of the bracken or _fougère_, were most in
favour.
The quality of the glass depended in great measure upon the care taken
in the preparation of the soda or potash. But the more impure ashes had
this advantage: the amount of lime, to say nothing of the iron oxide
and alumina, that they contained, rendered unnecessary in many cases
the addition of any further basic material; even the comparatively pure
Spanish barilla contained as much as seven per cent. of lime. In other
cases that base had to be added, generally in the form of a more or
less impure limestone.
Of the furnaces and of the various operations that come into play in
the preparation of the glass I shall treat as the occasion arises in
the following chapters. As, however, in this book we are—at least
after the ‘primitive glass’ has been dealt with in the next
chapter—almost exclusively concerned with vessels of ‘hollow ware’
made by a blowing process, it may be well to indicate, in this
introductory chapter, the nature of this process, and to give the names
of the principal tools used. These implements—apart from quite modern
improvements with which I am not concerned here—are of the simplest
nature, and have undergone little change during the last five hundred
years—perhaps I might say since the days of the Romans.
The molten glass is collected on the extremity of the blowing-iron to
form a ‘gathering.’ This gathering, while still in a soft condition, is
rolled upon the ‘marver’ into a cylindrical mass. By blowing down the
tube this mass is now distended to form a hollow pear-shaped vesicle,
for which it will be convenient to adopt the French term _paraison_. It
is from this paraison that a start is made to form by a ‘spinning’ or
‘flashing’ process a sheet of broad or crown glass; again, the vesicle
may be made to assume a cylindrical shape, and then opened out to form
larger sheets of glass; or finally—and this is for us the most
important—by holding the blowing-iron to which the bulb of glass is
attached in a vertical position (or sometimes by swinging it over the
workman’s head), and then by shaping it by means of certain simple
tools, the paraison is started on the course by which it will finally
be converted into a bottle or into a bowl-shaped vessel. I will here
only dwell on one point. It is evident that so long as the glass is
attached to the blowing-iron, although a simple bulb-shaped vessel may
be formed, there is so far no means of shaping or finishing the upper
portion. Before this can be done the further extremity of the paraison
must be attached by means of a small gathering of molten glass to a
light tapering rod of iron, the ‘punto’ or ‘pontil.’ The vessel—for so
the paraison may now be called—is at this stage removed from the
blowing-iron. This is done by ‘wetting it off’ by means of a rod of
moistened iron. The glass vessel, now attached by its base to the
pontil, is reheated, and the further treatment taken in hand by a
workman seated on a stool with long projecting arms, on which (or on
the knee of the workman) the pontil is rotated. The shaping is chiefly
done by an iron instrument called the ‘procello,’ or spring-tool,
formed like a pair of sugar-tongs by two blades connected by an elastic
bow. Finally, the edges are finished off by shears and scissors of
various forms, which cut the hot glass as if it were a piece of soft
leather. The now finished vessel is removed from the pontil by wetting
the point of attachment, and is taken to the annealing oven.
In this very summary account of the processes involved in making, say,
a flask of simple shape, I have only dwelt upon such instruments and
methods as have for several centuries been in general use.
THE DECAY OF GLASS
Before ending this preliminary chapter, a few words may be said of the
changes that take place in glass in the course of time from the action
of the surrounding medium.[5] These changes are in the main due to the
moisture and carbonic acid contained either in the soil or in the
atmosphere. Perhaps what is most striking in this action is on the one
hand the apparently capricious and irregular way in which the glass is
attacked, and on the other the great beauty of the iridescent effects
that so often accompany the process of decay.
As to the apparent irregularity in the progress of the superficial
decay, it would seem that, apart from differences in the chemical
composition of the glass, much depends upon the preservation of the
original smooth ‘epidermis.’ Once this is impaired, whether by
accidental scratches or by the growth of fungus or lichen, the carbonic
acid or the ammonia salts contained in the air or soil find, in the
presence of moisture, a secure lodgment, and the work of decay proceeds
rapidly. Thus in the case of the little flasks of primitive glass of
which I shall have to speak in the next chapter, in one example it may
be found that the smooth skin of the glass has for more than three
thousand years remained absolutely intact, while in another specimen
from a neighbouring tomb the glass not only on the surface, but far
into the interior, has taken on a talc-like or porcelainous
consistency, and the brilliant colours have for the most part
disappeared.
There is no need to enter into the details of the chemical processes
involved in this process of decay. Suffice to say that the action is
one of the same nature as that which has played so important a part in
the geological changes of the earth’s surface, especially in the
disintegration of the granitic rocks. It depends upon the power
possessed by carbonic acid, in the presence of moisture, of decomposing
the silicates of the alkalis. The soluble carbonate of soda or of
potash thus formed is then quickly washed out from the surface of the
glass. There remains, in the form either of iridescent scales or of an
opaque pearly crust, a layer consisting not perhaps of pure silica, but
of an acid silicate of lime, alumina, or lead as the case may be.
Now a piece of clear glass may appear to the eye to be devoid of
internal structure. But the ‘metal’ has, we know, in every case been
subjected during the manufacture to a complicated series of involutions
and doublings, to say nothing of the subsequent inflation if the glass
has been subjected to a blowing process. When decay sets in—something
similar may at times be seen in the case of a piece of wrought
iron—this complicated formation is in part revealed, for it is evident
that upon it the lines taken by the decay are in a measure dependent.
On blown glass especially, the disintegration of the surface tends to
result in a scaly formation resembling that of the shell of an oyster.
As a result of the decomposition of light in its passage through these
fine superficial films, and of the partial reflection from the back of
the scales at various depths, we get those unsurpassed iridescent
effects that we associate above all with the glass of the Romans. That
these brilliant hues are dependent entirely upon the physical structure
is well shown by the total disappearance of the colours when the
surface of a piece of iridescent glass is moistened, as well as by
their reappearance when the glass is again dried.
Lead of glass is much less liable to such changes, but where in such
glass decay has once set in, the whole mass may be converted into a
white horny substance.
In other cases the surface of a piece of clear white glass will become
gradually filled with a series of minute intersecting fissures, which
in time may penetrate the whole mass. When this change has been fully
developed we get a true crackle-glass, not to be confounded with the
frosted glass of Venice mentioned in Chapter XIII. This fissuring of
the glass-mass in its various stages may be traced in many of the
specimens of Venetian, Netherlandish, and English glass at South
Kensington. When fully developed the effect is at times very beautiful.
The tints of coloured glass may, it would seem, change in the course of
time. Colourless glass also, from which the greenish shades derived
from protoxide of iron have been removed by the addition of binoxide of
manganese, is above all liable to assume in the course of time a purple
tint under the action of sunlight. Again, if sulphur be present in
glass, as is the case where sulphate of soda has been employed as a
source of the alkali, the soda salt may be reduced by any protoxide of
iron that is present. The sulphide of sodium and the sesqui-oxide of
iron thus gradually formed will both of them tend to give a yellowish
tint to the glass.[6]
Changes of this nature may occasionally have come about in the stained
glass of the windows of our Gothic churches—the flesh-tints, which we
know were produced in early days by manganese, may in the course of
time have become of a more pronounced purple hue.
CHAPTER II
THE PRIMITIVE GLASS OF THE EGYPTIANS AND SYRIANS
From a technical point of view the history of glass might be divided
into three periods—periods, it is true, of very unequal length and
relative importance.
The first of these, one more especially of archæological interest,
would include all the glass made before the discovery of the process of
forming a vesicle by blowing through a hollow tube. Nearly all the
glass that finds its way into our collections would be classed in the
second period; this would extend from the beginning of our era to the
end of the eighteenth century. In the course of these long centuries,
the work of the glass-maker has of course been influenced by the
varying schools and fashions of different ages and countries, but
technically there is no great advance to be noted in the work of the
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries when compared with that of the
early days of the Roman Empire; and this is still more true if we
consider merely the materials employed, their preparation, and the
methods of their fusion. But before the end of the eighteenth century a
great change had set in. The manufacture of glass in England and France
had become an important industry, and we enter upon the third or
industrial period. With the general advance in mechanical processes
that is so characteristic of the time, the old methods of the working
of glass were swept aside, so that before the middle of the last
century, whatever of interest was to be found in the manufacture and in
its results depended upon anything rather than upon the artistic
qualities of the glass made.
Now, as I have said, the characteristic and dominant quality of glass
is to be found in its capability of being blown into vessels of varying
shape when in a viscous and semi-fluid state. All glass then, made at a
time when advantage had not yet been taken of that essential property
of the material, we may class together in a primitive group. This line
of demarcation is as important, to return to a comparison I have
already made, as that between hand-moulded pottery and that thrown on
the potter’s wheel. The objects made in the earlier period by primitive
processes were mostly small, and their merit depended chiefly upon the
brilliancy and the skilful juxtaposition of a few simple colours—they
may for the most part be classed as _verroterie_.
It has long been acknowledged that it is from Egypt that our earliest
specimens of glass have come. But until quite recently the greatest
misconceptions have prevailed as to the age and the methods of
preparation of Egyptian glass. Misled by an erroneous interpretation of
what are probably representations of metallurgical processes, on the
walls of Twelfth Dynasty tombs at Beni Hassan and elsewhere, it was
inferred that the art of blowing glass was known to the Egyptians at
least as long ago as the days of the Middle Empire; by others the art
was carried back to a still earlier period. We now have almost full
assurance that glass in a true sense was practically unknown to the
Egyptians before the time of the Eighteenth Dynasty (say between 1600
and 1500 B.C.),[7] and that for at least a thousand years after that
period all that was made was produced by a primitive process in which
the blowing-iron found no part. We have, unfortunately, up to the
present time absolutely no evidence to show in what country or at what
date this new process—I mean the blowing of a vesicle of glass—first
came into use. There is, as we shall see, some reason to look for it
rather in Western Asia than in Egypt, but the important point to bear
in mind is that it was only after the introduction of this process of
blowing, first to Alexandria and then to the Rome of the early empire,
that the employment of glass for objects of daily use became in any way
general.
Glass, indeed, in these early days, whether in Egypt or in the Greek
world of the Mycenæan age, was something very different from what
we now understand by the term. We must ‘think away’ a great deal of
the modern connotation of the word. We must, above all, think of the
material in connection with the native precious or semi-precious stones
that it more or less resembled, and which were used along with it for
decorative purposes. We do not know the Egyptian name for glass, but
probably, like the Greeks, they divided all the hard stony bodies used
in the arts into such as were ‘dug up’—natural products, that is, which
they found ready at hand—and such as had been artificially prepared,
and above all previously melted (the Λίθος όρωρυγμένη on the one hand,
and the Λίθος χυτή on the other).
If, as I have said, there is little evidence for the existence of glass
in Egypt before the Eighteenth Dynasty, it is quite otherwise with
regard to a very similar substance, identical almost in chemical
composition—one whose history can be traced much further back. On
beads of clear rock crystal, dating from the First Dynasty, and it
would seem from an even earlier period in some cases, we find a coating
of turquoise blue transparent glaze[8]—the very glaze, in fact, that
has given a prevailing tint to the vast series of smaller objects of
Egyptian art that we see in the cases of our museums. A similar colour,
I may observe, continued in favour in Mohammedan times, and indeed
gives a dominant note to Oriental art in contrast to the ochry tints of
yellow, red, and brown prevalent in the West.
The Egyptians soon learned to apply this blue glaze—essentially a
silicate of soda and copper—to the surface of other natural stones,
and above all to a fritty porous earthenware, the so-called Egyptian
porcelain. Such an alkaline glaze, indeed, will only adhere to a porous
base of this kind, with which it becomes united on firing, by a
chemical reaction, or at least by the solution in it of some of the
silicates of alumina and lime in the clay. This glaze differs
essentially from those used on true porcelain—these last are almost of
the same composition as the ground they cover—but, as in the case of
the glazes on porcelain, so the materials of the Egyptian glazes were
probably first incorporated together in a partially fused frit which
was then ground and mixed with water to form a soup-like ‘slip,’ into
which the object to be glazed was dipped. There have been brought from
Egypt a few rare objects carved out of a blue frit (probably similar to
that used in the preparation of glazes), for which a very early date
has been claimed. But such a frit is no true glass.
The Egyptians had from the earliest periods been adepts in the carving
of native minerals and rocks, and evidently found great pleasure in the
strange markings and contrasts of colour found on their polished
surfaces. Already in pre-dynastic times they availed themselves of
their native granites, porphyries and conglomerates; from these
materials they manufactured those large, carefully turned vases of
which so many have lately been brought from Egypt. For smaller
objects—jewellery, beads, and inlay of various descriptions—they had
command of a wide scale of colours—reds and tawny yellows from jasper,
purple from the amethyst, greens from root of emerald and from a
special kind of felspar, and blue from the turquoise and (at a very
early period) from the _lapis lazuli_. But the stones to which they had
recourse for their favourite blues and greens were rare, and they were
therefore the more ready to find a cheaper substitute in glass. Again,
in Egypt, no stone was in greater favour than the native alabaster,[9]
with its bands and zig-zag lines of transparent crystals in an opaque
base of a warm milky hue. But there was no play of colour in this
latter substance, and its very softness restricted the uses to which it
could be put. In glass they found a substance hard enough to allow of
more delicate forms, and on it chevrons of yellow and white could be
traced upon a nearly opaque ground of turquoise or dark blue. Some such
origin in native stones we may perhaps find for the decorative motives
of the little vases, variously known as _phialæ_, _unguentaria_,
_alabastra_, which were in such favour not only with the Egyptians, but
perhaps even more so among the inhabitants of the islands and coasts of
the Mediterranean, during a period of at least a thousand years. It is
indeed these little vases that are the most characteristic product of
the first period of glass-making.
It is not too much to say that the little we know of the processes of
these early Egyptian glass-makers is derived from notices on the
subject scattered through the memoirs in which Dr. Flinders Petrie has
described the results of his excavations, more especially from the
report issued in 1894, on his discoveries at Tell-el-Amarna. In the
introduction to the catalogue of the Egyptian Exhibition held at the
Burlington Fine Arts Club in 1895, Dr. Petrie has summed up our
knowledge on this subject. I will quote the description of the method
by which, according to him, these alabastra were made.
[Illustration:
_PLATE II_
SMALL VASES OF “PRIMITIVE” GLASS
1. EGYPTIAN, NINETEENTH DYNASTY. 2. PROBABLY FROM GREEK ISLANDS. 3.
ŒNOCHOE, FROM THE SLADE COLLECTION.]
‘A metal rod of the size of the intended interior of the neck, and
rather conical, was coated at the end with a ball of sand held together
by cloth and string. This was covered with glass, probably by winding a
thread of glass round it, as large beads of this age are thus made. The
vase could then be reheated as often as needed for working by holding
it in a furnace, the metal rod forming a handle, and the sand inside
the vase preventing its collapse. Threads of coloured glass could then
be wound round it and incorporated by rolling; the wavy pattern was
produced by dragging the surface in different directions, the foot was
pressed into shape by pincers, the brim was formed, and the handles
were put on. Lastly, on cooling, the metal rod would contract and come
loose from the neck, and after it was withdrawn the sand could be
rubbed out from the body of the vase.’
The wavy decoration thus obtained was of two types: (i) formed simply
by a succession of crescent-shape curves, or (ii) by means of a double
drag, the pattern assumed a form like a frond of palm leaves, or still
more like these leaves plaited into a basket. (Cf. Pl. II.)
The number of these little vases that can be definitely attributed to
the Eighteenth Dynasty (say about the sixteenth or fifteenth century
B.C.) is small, but it is worthy of note that for brilliancy of colour
and for purity of the glassy paste, the early examples are unsurpassed
in later times. This is certainly a remarkable fact, especially if we
are to regard the art as a new one. I cannot enter here into the
evidence that would seem to point to a foreign origin for this early
Egyptian glass—it will be enough to mention the conquests of Thothmes
III. in Syria, and the close relation of his successor, Akhenaten, the
‘heretic king,’ with Syria and Babylonia, as shown by his marriage, and
by the famous Tell-el-Amarna tablets. As bearing on this question I may
refer to certain paintings on a tomb of this age at Drag Aboul Neggah,
near Thebes (reproduced in the _Revue Archéologique_, 1895, Pl. 15),
which represent the unloading of a foreign trading-vessel. We can
distinguish here the merchants offering certain objects of value to an
Egyptian official; among these are certain striped vases which have
been doubtfully recognised as of glass. In the hieroglyphics
accompanying wall paintings of this period we more than once find that
vessels of rock crystal and _lapis lazuli_ are mentioned, as well as
blocks of uncut stones, and neither by the hieroglyphics used nor by
the representation of the objects would it be easy to distinguish the
latter material from lumps of glass. Again, Syrian workmen are known to
have been employed at this time in Egypt, and nowhere would this be
more likely than in the immediate neighbourhood of the palace of the
king at Tell-el-Amarna, where the glass-works described by Dr. Petrie
were situated.
All this, however, is mere conjecture, while as an argument for the
native origin of Egyptian glass we have the indisputable fact that the
manufacture was carried on in the new town established by Akhenaten at
Tell-el-Amarna (_circa_ 1450-1400 B.C.). This is made clear by the
discoveries of Dr. Petrie in the winter of 1891-92. Among the
waste-heaps of some important glass factories he has found enough
material to put it beyond doubt that glass was there prepared from its
raw constituents. First, with regard to the frits, the essential
preliminary stage in the manufacture of glass: as I have said, some
such half-fused material must have been long in use by the Egyptians in
the preparation of their blue glazes. Complete freedom from iron was
attained in this case (just as in after days by the Venetians) by the
employment of crushed pebbles of white quartz as the source of the
silica. These pebbles served also for the floor of the furnace, and
they were doubtless more easily crushed after being thus used for some
time. The fritting-pans, to judge from some large fragments of frit
that turned up, were shallow bowls some ten inches across. These pans
were, it would seem, supported for firing by cylindrical jars
resembling the seggars of porcelain works. The shape and size of the
crucibles in which the frit was subsequently melted may be inferred
from some masses of glass found in the rubbish. These masses had been
allowed to cool in the melting-pot, and the presence of frothy and
worthless matter at the top was a proof that the glass was not merely
remelted in them, but prepared on the spot from the above-mentioned
frit. The glass was left to solidify in the crucible, and when cold,
the crucible, as well as the scum at the top, was chipped away, leaving
a clear lump of good glass. Dr. Petrie thinks that this glass was not
remelted as a whole for subsequent working, but that lumps of suitable
size were chipped off, and these, being heated to softness, ‘were then
laid on a flat surface and rolled by a bar worked diagonally across
them; ... the marks of this diagonal rolling are seen on the finished
rolls.’ The rods thus produced were now drawn out to form a cane, or,
if previously rolled flat, a thin ribbon. Beads were formed by winding
these canes or threads of glass round a wire, or rather round a fine
rod of hammered bronze, for wire-drawing was an invention of a much
later date; such rods have indeed been found with the unfinished beads
still on them. Similar canes of glass were doubtless worked in to the
sides of the little vases to form the banded and chevron decoration
which I have already described.
The silica for this glass was derived, as we have seen, from quartz
pebbles, but we have no information as to the source of the other
important constituent, the alkali. It is known, however, that the glass
of the ancients was essentially a soda-glass, made for the most part in
maritime regions. Again, the possibility of obtaining an abundant
supply of fuel has always been an important element in the selection of
localities for glass-works. Now in the neighbourhood of Thebes fuel
must always have been scarce and dear, and it is uncertain whether
there was any source of soda near at hand. We may perhaps regard the
glass-works of Tell-el-Amarna as due in the main to the caprice of that
eccentric sovereign Akhenaten. They were probably started at his orders
to supply the demand for the new material then coming into favour at
his court. In so far as the making of glass ever became an industry in
Egypt, we must look rather to the neighbourhood of the Delta for its
development. There at least fuel would be more abundant, and there a
supply of soda was at hand in the ashes of marine plants, even if the
natron of the adjacent salt lakes was not yet used for the purpose.[10]
But until a much later date, glass was always a somewhat rare substance
in Egypt, and was, it would seem, never produced on a large scale.
I must now say something as to the source of the colours with which the
Egyptians stained their glass. In the absence of any satisfactory
analyses, we are strangely in the dark on this interesting
question.[11] But everything points to the predominance of copper as a
colouring material at an early period, so much so that we may perhaps
consider—and this is a suggestion that has indeed been already made by
a French writer—that the invention of glazes in the first place, and
then that of glass, were offshoots of the metallurgy of copper, and
that these industries may therefore be especially connected with the
copper age. In any case, it was in all probability not, as in later
days, a more or less transparent and colourless glass, but rather one
of a pale or dark blue colour, that at the commencement formed the
basis to which a decoration of other colours was added.
The famous blue of the Egyptians, of which we hear from Vitruvius and
other later writers, was essentially a silicate of soda, lime, and
copper. It should be borne in mind that without the presence of the
first two bases—the lime and the soda—a good copper blue in glass or
glaze cannot be obtained. Indeed in the case of porcelain and fayence,
the blues obtained from copper have always been confined to various
shades of turquoise, as in the well-known glazes and enamels of the
Chinese and the French, and even these turquoise blues, always, as we
have said, containing lime and soda as well as copper, have only been
produced with great difficulty. The mastery of a complete series of
copper blues, ranging through every shade from a blue-black to a pale
greenish turquoise, we may thus regard as a special triumph of the old
Egyptians. At one period a darker shade has been in favour, at another
a paler hue, according as the _lapis lazuli_ on the one hand, or the
turquoise or green felspar on the other, was taken as the standard of
excellence, so that the shade of colour of the glaze on a scarab or a
bead may at times throw some light on its date.
Distinct shades of green, apart from greenish blue, were much less in
favour with the Egyptians, nor did they ever attain to the brilliant
tints of the malachite. A green glass, generally comparatively
transparent, was indeed at times obtained when a certain amount of iron
was present in the materials employed; but this was merely an
accidental modification of the blue. The pale tint of the green felspar
was also imitated in an opaque glass used for inlaying.
For their reds the Egyptians were content to imitate the colour of the
jasper, and here again they had recourse to copper; the transparent
ruby tints of the mediæval workmen, whether obtained from copper or
gold, were unknown to them. Their opaque red glass owed its colour to
the presence, in large quantities, of the basic oxide of copper. In
later specimens as much as 15 or even 20 per cent. has been found; some
tin seems to be always present, giving an opaque enamel-like appearance
to the Egyptian red—perhaps the colour was prepared directly from
bronze. We often find this red paste oxidised on the surface; the
coating of green carbonate then gives it the appearance of a richly
patinated bronze, the blood-red body only showing when the specimen has
been chipped. It is an interesting point that in early times the use of
this red glass appears to have been confined to inlaid work—that is to
say, it was never worked up with glass of other colours. This was, no
doubt, for a practical reason: during the elaborate processes of
patting, shaping, and reheating involved in the old system of working,
the materials must have been exposed to a strong oxidising influence,
and the basic red glass would thereby have lost its fine colour; it
would also, perhaps, have injuriously affected the neighbouring
colours. Some such difficulties in the working together of glasses of
various colours may have influenced the Egyptians in adhering to their
old system of inlays, employing, that is, small pieces, separately cast
or cut out in the cold from slabs of glass of various colours. In such
inlays the red paste was freely used from early times. On the other
hand, I do not think that this fine copper red has ever been found on a
glass vase of Egyptian _provenance_. On a few rare examples of later
date (note especially two alabastra in the Slade collection, Nos. 15
and 35) we find indeed an opaque red combined with other colours, and
in one case it forms the base (Plate II.). This red paste is of a
peculiar spotty consistence, and I am inclined to think that the
colouring matter in these examples is rather iron than copper. In later
days the Egyptians made use of another tint, a fine orange. This
colour, indeed, would seem to be the only addition to their palette
during a period of more than fifteen hundred years.
The purple tint derived from oxide of manganese was known from very
early times; the colour has been found in the glazes of the First
Dynasty. It was, however, rarely used by the Egyptians for colouring
glass. In some of the little vases from the Greek islands and elsewhere
it has, however, been employed to form a zigzag of the usual type upon
an opaque white ground. If we so rarely find this amethyst purple
combined with other colours, this is probably for a reason of a similar
nature to that dwelt upon in the case of the copper red.
Next to the two shades of blue, the colour most frequently found on
Egyptian glass is a yellow, at times of a full mustard tint, but more
often of a paler hue. Feather-like curved chevrons of this colour,
combined with turquoise and opaque white on a deep blue ground,
constitute indeed the normal type of decoration in a whole series of
these little vases. I can find no record of any analysis of this yellow
colour, but we may well compare it with the fine yellow glazes of the
Chinese where the colour is derived from a mixture of an ochry earth
with an oxide of antimony. There is no doubt that this last metal was
known to the Egyptians; it was used at an early period by the women to
darken the outline of their eyes.[12]
What has been said of the colours used by the Egyptians applies equally
to the whole series of this primitive glass, indeed to a large extent
to the glass of the Romans as well. It will form, I hope, a solid
introduction to the subject generally.
The little vases or _unguentaria_—by far the most important objects in
this division of our subject—occur in Egypt in two forms. First, the
true columnar kohl-pots, spreading out at the top in the form of a
lotus capital. Secondly, globular jars with a pair of small handles:
these jars are sometimes flattened at the sides so as to pass into the
shape of a pilgrim’s flask. In a little vase of this latter form in the
British Museum the paste is of a deep, somewhat translucent, brownish
red (Plate II.), and this colour passes in other examples into a rich
transparent honey-red or hyacinth tint. The colour in both cases is, I
think, derived from iron.
Of quite exceptional interest is the little vase in the British Museum,
bearing the _prænomen_ of Thothmes III., painted in yellowish enamel
round the shoulder. I say painted, for in this case the decoration is
simply applied to the surface, and not incorporated into the glass,
thus forestalling the later processes of enamelling upon glass. The
vase in question is somewhat rudely formed; it is of an opaque paste of
a remarkably fine turquoise hue, and the sides are decorated with three
conventional trees also in yellow enamel. This vase has been regarded
as the earliest dated specimen of true glass that is so far known to
us.[13]
The British Museum has lately acquired a curious vessel of glass, five
inches in height, somewhat of the shape of a Greek _crater_. The wavy,
dragged decoration on a pale slaty ground calls to mind certain early
vases of wood or stone _painted_ with a similar design. This vase,
together with a cup of azure blue transparent paste, comes probably
from the tomb of Amenophis II. Another little vase in the same
collection, of _aryballos_ outline, has been shaped apparently by the
lathe—so accurate is the form—from a mass of opaque turquoise paste
of frit-like nature.[14]
It was in the tombs of Amenophis II. and III., in the Valley of the
Kings, near Thebes, that the unique series of glass vases, now in the
Cairo Museum, was found (excavations of 1898-99). On more than one of
these is a cartouche, a rectangle of deep blue, containing the royal
name, ‘inlaid’[15] in several colours. One comparatively large vase
(several of them are as much as eight inches in height) is decorated by
three rosettes in low relief. The twelve petals are of blue, green, and
red (the latter colour quite superficial) on a white ground. Still more
remarkable is a vase with galloping horses and negroes; in this case
the design is apparently inlaid on the interior, and only seen through
the transparent body.
The little pots for cosmetics, in the shape of truncated cones, are
usually made of a turquoise-glazed fayence. Those of glass are very
rare; one in the British Museum is decorated on a nearly black base
with splashes of white enamel; this enamel is now suffering from some
kind of efflorescence and is falling off in scales. On another fragment
in the Glass-Room we find yellow and white splashes on a black ground.
This splashed ware is characteristic, I think, of the later
dynasties—the twentieth and the twenty-first. We are reminded by it of
a similar application of enamel colours to glass that was much in
favour in France in the seventeenth century.
Apart from these little vases, the glass found in Egypt is confined to
pieces for inlay and to beads or other small objects of _verroterie_.
For the inlay the glass was rolled into slabs and cut out in the
desired shape, the surface also being often carved in low relief: in
later times the separate pieces were usually cast in open moulds.
Beside the colours commonly used in the decoration of the vases, we
find also an imitation of the pale green felspar, and the use of a red
paste is, as I have said, more frequent. The individual pieces of the
inlaid designs—they generally represent hieroglyphics, and are
inserted into a basis of wood—are sometimes of a considerable size;
some kneeling figures of a late period, found near Tanis, are as much
as four inches in height. Mr. Griffith found here, among the ruins of
houses dating from early Ptolemaic times, some traces of glass-works,
which allow us to supplement in a measure what we know of the
manufacture in more remote periods. It may be remarked, however, that
on the one hand no vases of the old chevron type were discovered—and
this is true, I think, of all the finds of glass from later deposits in
Egypt—nor on the other hand, as far as I am aware, have any specimens
of blown glass been found even among Ptolemaic remains. At Tanis were
found many small moulds of terra-cotta and limestone into which the
molten glass was run—so, at least, says Mr. Griffith (_Egyptian
Exploration Fund. Tell Nebeshah. 1888_). In earlier times, at any rate,
the process seems rather to have been to press down into the moulds
little pellets of glass in a pasty state.
In the Glass-Room at the British Museum may be seen an interesting
collection of this later glass of Ptolemaic or perhaps Roman date,
found at Denderah. There are many fragments of glass paste destined
probably to be fitted into hollows cut in a wooden plaque, the
intervening surface being covered with gilt _gesso_. Here, as at Tanis,
the colours are practically the same as those found in the Eighteenth
Dynasty glass, with the addition only of the orange-yellow tint to
which I have already referred. It is in the centre of these wooden
plaques that what are perhaps the largest pieces of Egyptian glass
known to us are found. These are the scarabæi of opaque blue glass, at
times so closely resembling _lapis lazuli_ that their true nature has
been in dispute. Even the white marblings and spots of the native stone
are imitated; indeed, in one specimen in the collection of Mr. Hilton
Price, the little grains of pyrites in the stone, so much admired by
the ancients, have been imitated by _paillettes_ of gold scattered in
the paste. (Cf. the passage from Theophrastus quoted below, p. 35.)
[Illustration:
_PLATE III_
ANCIENT EGYPTIAN GLASS
1. SCARAB OF GLASS PASTE IMITATING LAPIS LAZULI. TWENTY-SECOND DYNASTY
2. FLASK FOR COSMETICS, IN SHAPE OF COLUMN WITH PAPYRUS CAPITAL
3. PLAQUE OF “FUSED MOSAIC” FOR INLAY; FROM DENDERAH, PTOLEMAIC PERIOD]
But the Egyptians made use also of other processes partaking of the
nature both of inlay and mosaic. Taking advantage of the fact that
pieces of glass when softened by heat adhere to one another—they are
in fact in this condition as ‘sticky’ as partially melted sugar—they
formed a mosaic of small rods of glass; these were heated to a plastic
condition, and if desired drawn out to reduce the dimension of the
design; when cold, transverse sections were cut, on each of which the
pattern appeared. In other cases the design was excavated on the
surface of the glass, the coloured paste pressed into the hollows when
in a soft condition, and the whole plaque finally reheated so as to
form a homogeneous mass. Some such process, at least, must have been
adopted in the preparation of the large slabs, generally with a ground
of deep blue glass, of which a fine series may be seen in the Egyptian
department of the British Museum. Elaborate work of this kind dates for
the most part from Ptolemaic and even Roman times. Similar processes we
shall come across again, in the case of the _millefiori_ glass and the
inlaid wall-plates of the Romans.
It is but a comparatively small number of the little glass vases with
chevron patterns in our collections that have come from Egypt; up to
the present time, however, no trace of their manufacture has been found
in any other country; and although we cannot attribute so early a date
as the Eighteenth Dynasty of Egypt to any of the little glass jugs and
amphoræ found in Greek and Etruscan tombs, this ‘Mediterranean’ glass
is in every respect subsidiary to the Egyptian series.
GLASS IN THE MYCENÆAN AGE
It would, indeed, be quite beside the mark to make a separate division
for the glass of the Greeks, who for one reason or another appear never
to have found much attraction in the material. This would at least seem
to have been the case in Greece itself during the great centuries of
Greek art, for nearly all the specimens of glass that we have from
tombs of that time have been brought from more or less outlying lands,
from Southern Italy, Sardinia or Etruria, above all from the islands of
Rhodes and Cyprus, where the older culture long survived, and where
Phœnician and Egyptian influences were strong.
Such a statement, however, would not hold for the so-called Mycenæan
Age. At that time glass was indeed a rare material brought by Phœnician
merchants from Egypt, perhaps from Syria also. In some cases this
imported glass may have been remelted and worked up again; it was
certainly highly prized.[16] Perhaps the most striking instance of the
application of glass to decorative purposes in Greece itself at this
period, is to be found in the famous frieze discovered by Schliemann in
the vestibule of the men’s hall at Tiryns. The pattern, carved in low
relief upon the alabaster slabs, was heightened by studs of blue glass
fixed into these slabs at intervals. Some of the roundels of this
glass, forming the centre of rosettes, are as much as three-quarters of
an inch in diameter. We have the authority of Virchow for stating that
this is a soda-lime glass, coloured by copper—an analysis showed no
trace of cobalt. On the other hand, cobalt has been found by German
chemists in beads of an otherwise similar composition from Mycenæ and
from the bee-hive tombs of Attica.
Now the question has arisen: Is this glass inlay to be identified with
the _kyanos_ which, as Homer tells us, formed the frieze or cornice
(θριγκός) round the bronze walls in the palace of Alkinoos? Helbig,
writing before the discovery of the frieze at Tiryns, maintained
that the poet’s _kyanos_ was of a glassy nature. He tells us (_Das
Homerische Epos_, pp. 79 _seq._, quoted in Schliemann’s _Tiryns_)—‘This
kyanos must be identified not with blue steel, but with (1st) the
later Σαπφειρός—_lapis lazuli_; (2nd) with the blue colour obtained by
pulverising this stone, and finally with the artificial imitation of
this stone or of ultramarine. The classical passage is in Theophrastus
(_On Stones_, § 55). This author distinguishes between the natural
(αὐτοφυής) and the artificial (σκευαστός) _kyanos_. That by the first
_lapis lazuli_ is intended appears from an another passage (§ 39),
where the gold dust distinctive of the _lapis lazuli_ is cited as the
peculiarity of the natural _kyanos_.... Theophrastus continues—“There
are three kinds of kyanos, the Egyptian, the Scythian, and the Cyprian.
The best for the darker colour is the Egyptian, for the lighter, the
Scythian. The Egyptian is artificially prepared, and those that write
about the kings tell us which king first, to imitate natural kyanos,
melted the prepared kyanos (Κυάνος χυτός), and they allege that, among
other things, from Phœnicia came a tribute of kyanos, partly natural
and partly burnt (τοῦ μὲν ἀπυροῦ τοῦ δὲ πεπυρωμένου).”’
Helbig goes on to identify the unfired kyanos with the copper ore of
Cyprus—the blue carbonate which the Phœnicians brought to the
Pharaohs, and which was the main source of copper for the Eastern
Mediterranean.[17]
At Mycenæ itself little glass has been found—some minute tubular
beads, decomposed externally but with a core of blue glass (pronounced
by Landerer to contain lead and cobalt), and a few beads of clear
glass. In the bee-hive tombs of Attica, especially at Spata, were found
a number of small objects of glass, cast, says M. Tsountas, in moulds
of granite and basalt which have been discovered on the spot. Indeed in
all these tombs, next to the beads, the commonest examples of glass are
the little rosettes and plaques cast in a mould with a design in low
relief; these rosettes are often pierced with holes and were probably
sewn on to the dresses of the women. The surface, and sometimes the
whole body, is decomposed, presenting a white silvery glimmer, and this
appearance Landerer considers to be characteristic of the presence of
lead in the glass. At Vaphio we hear of fragments of glass ‘goblets’
being found, decorated with spirals of black, chestnut, and yellow
(Tsountas and Manatt, _The Mycenæan Age_, 1897). If these are to be
identified with our chevron vases, it is, as far as I know, the only
mention of their occurrence on the mainland of Greece at this time.
But it is from the Greco-Phœnician tombs of Cyprus and Rhodes that the
greatest quantity of this primitive glass (chiefly in the form of
_unguentaria_) has been obtained; again from Greco-Etruscan tombs in
Tuscany, from what may be called Greco-Oscan tombs in Southern Italy,
and even from Greco-Scythian tombs in Southern Russia—from, in fact,
nearly all the lands visited by Phœnician traders. How widely spread
was the acquaintance with these little vases we may infer from the
imitations of the chevron pattern on coloured pottery found in Melos. A
similar decoration has been found on Lydian pottery from tumuli near
Sardis, and even, it is claimed, upon prehistoric pottery brought from
the Nilghery Hills in Southern India.
These little vases now take characteristic Greek shapes. The columnar
kohl-pots are replaced by alabastra, very similar in form. Even more
common in later tombs are the little _amphoræ_, sometimes pointed at
the base, at others ending in a rounded knob; a jug-shaped form like
the Greek _oinochoe_ is also common. In some cases—in specimens of
Egyptian origin very frequently—the surface of the glass is entirely
unchanged. But when the decay of the surface has once set in, we
generally find that the decomposition has eaten deeply into the
substance of the glass (see above, p. 16). In such cases it often
happens that the blue colour has been entirely removed, and the vase
has assumed the appearance of a dull, whitish pottery.
I will now briefly mention a few abnormal types of decoration. On some
little amphoræ from Southern Italy the chevrons are of a manganese
purple on a white translucent ground—this colour appears never to be
combined with the more frequent blues and yellows. I have already noted
that the use of red is very rare; where it appears, the technique of
the vase appears to be different—the surface has probably been ground
or turned on a lathe. A beautiful alabastron in the Slade collection,
with red ground decorated with turquoise and yellow chevrons, should be
specially noticed. (See also Pl II, 2.)
How much these little vases were valued appears from the stands of gold
(decorated with applied spirals of an early type) on which they were
sometimes placed in the tombs. M. Reinach mentions some instances from
Crimean tombs, where chevron vases of the usual type have been found
attached by a fine chain of gold to the bracelet worn by the deceased
(Tolstoi and Kondakof, _Antiquités de la Russie Méridionale_, 1891).
The little bottles that we see in the hand of the recumbent effigy on
Phœnician sarcophagi, are probably to be identified with our glass
vases; we have an instance of this on the well-known female figure in
the Palermo Museum (figured by Perrot and Chipiez and elsewhere).
LATER SURVIVALS OF THE PRIMITIVE GLASS
There are in the British Museum some little glass amphoræ from Camirus
and Ialysus in Rhodes, and others from Amathia and Salamis in Cyprus,
on which the chevron bands are not incorporated into the glass base,
but laid on the surface as in later enamelled ware. The chevrons in
such cases cannot have been ‘dragged’ by the old ingenious plan; they
must have been elaborately applied one by one. We may recognise
probably in such cases the survival of an old method of decoration
after the technical process by which it was produced had been lost. The
glass itself, too, is of a late type—transparent and hastily formed. I
think that the date of some of these ‘scamped’ chevron vases may be
later than is generally thought.
The beads and other objects of _verroterie_ from the Cyprian and
Rhodian tombs differ much from those found in the Mycenæan sepulchres
of Continental Greece. There are in the British Museum some large beads
of perfectly clear glass from Ialysus in Rhodes[18]; these are probably
of Asiatic origin. We must also range with this ‘primitive’ glass the
large beads—if beads they are to be called—in the form of satyr-like
masks, so widely spread through Mediterranean lands (Pl. XV., 1), as
well as those of irregular shape that so closely resemble the old
‘bull’s eye’ sweetmeats, built up of interlacing bands of various
colours. Indeed the technique of the manufacture of these beads was
probably very similar to that of those handmade ‘lollipops,’ for in
spite of its lower fusing-point, and of its solubility in water, there
are many points of resemblance between sugar in a state of semi-fusion
and glass in a similar condition.[19]
What little I have to say of the rare specimens of glass of a more
advanced type found in Greek tombs, I will postpone to the next chapter.
THE PRIMITIVE GLASS OF WESTERN ASIA
The civilisation of the inhabitants of the Euphrates valley reaches
probably as far back as that of the Egyptians. Its influence has
extended at various times from the Balkan peninsula to the borders of
India, including Persia on the one hand, and on the other the kingdoms
that grew up in Syria, and among the primitive races of Asia Minor.
Now, if we are to judge by the contents of our museums, all these
lands, at least up to the time of the conquest of Alexander, may be
passed over as of no concern to the writer of a history of glass. If,
however, we allow ourselves to be influenced by less material evidence,
we shall find that a good case may be made out for the early existence
of glass in these lands. But before discussing this evidence, I would
impress upon the reader how much the survival of objects of glass
depends upon the habit of burying in tombs, and their discovery upon
the systematic exploration of these tombs. Compared with Egypt, how
little has been accomplished in this way in these Western Asiatic
countries!
I have already noticed the coincidence of the sudden development of the
manufacture of glass in Egypt with the first close contact, at the
period of the Eighteenth Dynasty, of the Egyptians with races already
affected by Babylonian culture; and we must remember that the glass
made within a few years of this first contact was never surpassed in
later times. Nor must we overlook the classical tradition concerning
the invention of glass handed down to us by Pliny and other writers.
According to this tradition, glass was first made by Phœnician traders
on the coast of Syria. Here, at any rate, the three great requisites
for the manufacture were at hand—a pure silica in the convenient form
of a white sand, alkali either from the ashes of marine plants or from
adjacent salt deposits, and finally, an abundant supply of fuel. And
yet, for the present, all that can be said is that we must associate
all the early glass that has been found in other countries than Egypt
with the trading peoples of the Eastern Mediterranean, whether
Pelasgians, Carians, or Phœnicians. To a similar source we may refer
the rare glass beads found in tombs of the bronze period in Western
Europe, as well perhaps as the scanty specimens of glass that have come
from Assyria and Persia. To these last we will now turn.
Of glass of undoubted Assyrian origin, by far the most important
example known to us is the little barrel-shaped vase with stunted
handles found so many years ago by the late Sir Henry Layard in the
ruins of Kouyunjik. This little vessel, after many vicissitudes, has
found its way into the British Museum. It is three and a quarter inches
in height, and is formed of a glass that is perfectly white and nearly
transparent; it still remains, indeed, our earliest example of such
glass. The date is fixed to the latter part of the seventh century
B.C., by an inscription cut in cuneiform characters containing the name
of Sargon, together with his titles as king of Assyria; on it is also
engraved the figure of a lion. Layard speaks of this vase as being
shaped and hollowed on a turner’s lathe after being ‘_blown in one
solid piece_’ (_Nineveh and Babylon_, 1853)—a curious expression for
one who interested himself so much in the manufacture of glass! We may,
perhaps, regard it as having been carved like an object of rock crystal
out of a solid piece of glass. We know of nothing like it from Egypt,
but then the Egyptians had no love for transparent, colourless
materials; from an early time, as we have seen, they had covered their
beads of rock crystal with a blue glaze (cf. p. 20). Here I may add
that the other specimens of glass discovered by Layard at Nineveh have
no claim to so early a date. Among them, however, were two bowls of
great interest, formed of a _vetro di trina_ or ‘lace glass,’ with very
fine meshes. These are now in the Assyrian Department of the British
Museum. Some almost identical bowls from the late Greek tombs of
Canosa, in Southern Italy, may be seen in the Glass-Room in the same
Museum.
The Assyrians and the Babylonians before them were, we know, from an
early date past masters in the manufacture of coloured glazes. The
turquoise blue glaze of their pottery and wall tiles has been handed
down in these lands apparently without a break, through Persian and
Sassanian times to their later Arab masters. In the Louvre are some
slabs of a translucent glass of a fine turquoise tint, about three
inches square, and three-quarters of an inch in thickness, which were
found in Babylonia, associated apparently with objects of great age.
Such masses of glass paste were perhaps manufactured as articles of
commerce to be employed afterwards in the preparation of glazes.[20]
Apart from these examples, the glass brought from Western Asia is of
the usual later Phœnician or Roman type—‘lachrymatories’ and bowls
mostly of greenish glass. It is not till we come to Sassanian times
that we can find any distinctive features, and the rare specimens
dating from that period will best be treated in a later chapter along
with the contemporary Byzantine glass. I may mention finally that there
are one or two passages in our Greek classics that may point to the use
of glass by the Persians in the fifth century B.C. For instance, among
other hardships suffered by the Athenian embassy to the great king—so
we are told ironically by Aristophanes in his _Acharnians_—they were
forced to drink from vessels of gold and from _cups of glass_, or, may
be, of rock crystal (ἐξ ὑαλίνων ἐκπωμάτων).
We know of no glass other than that of Roman type from the Bible lands,
using that expression in the narrower sense, nor in the whole
literature of the Hebrews is there, as far as I know, any definite
reference to glass. The word _Zechuchoth_, which occurs in a passage of
Job (xxviii. 17), is translated in the Vulgate by _vitrum_, but like
the Greek ὕαλος, it may as well refer to rock crystal, or any other
hard transparent substance. There is, however, a passage in Jeremiah
(ii. 22) which is really of more interest to us. It begins, ‘For though
thou wash thee with nitre and take thee much soap.’ From this passage
we learn at least that the natron of the salt lakes was in early days
applied to practical ends. This was one step to its application to the
manufacture of glass. Since then the soap-boiler has often been the
ally of the glass-maker.
I have thought it well to bring together these few facts and theories
bearing upon the early knowledge and use of glass in Western Asia, for
could its early existence in these lands be once definitely
established, we should be better able to fill up a gap in our history,
and it would perhaps be then possible to solve that obscure
problem—_When and where was the great step taken and the blowing-tube
first made use of for the production of a vesicle or paraison of glass?_
At the present day, in some of the villages around Hebron, glass is
still made by very primitive processes. Thence come the many-coloured
bangles of glass, dear to the Arab women of Palestine and Egypt; some
of these have found their way into collections of Egyptian antiquities,
so closely do they resemble the old wares. This glass is carried by
Arab and Jewish pedlars as far, it is said, as the Soudan. Here,
indeed, we have an industry that may well be regarded as a survival
from very early days.[21] On the other hand, some two thousand years
ago, as we learn from the evidence of the tombs, blown glass of an
advanced type, colourless and transparent, was a common article in
daily use, not only on the Syrian coast, but at Nazareth and other
Galilean towns (see below, Chap. IV.); and yet, as far as I know, there
is not a single allusion to glass or glass-making in any of our four
Gospels.[22]
CHAPTER III
THE LATER GREEK GLASS AND THE MOULDED AND CAST GLASS OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE
So far, all the glass with which we have come in contact has belonged
without exception to one family; small objects, generally brightly
coloured—beads, ornaments of various kinds and shapes, and, above all,
little vases decorated with chevron bands; all these things belong
rather to what in a general way may be classed as jewellery, objects of
personal decoration. Of the one essential application of glass, as we
understand the term, we have not so far found a single undoubted
example—its application, I mean, to vessels intended to hold wine or
water. This was to come a little later, and to come with a rush, as it
were; for by the first century of our era, glass had already taken a
position at least as important as at any subsequent time in our history.
I am speaking of glass, of course, in the narrow sense of the word,
especially as a receptacle for liquids, for wine in the first place.
From this time onward this is the predominant service to which the
material has been put, and, indeed, at no time was its relation to
wine-drinking more intimate than among the Romans of the early empire.
It is certainly strange that in spite of our comparatively intimate
acquaintance with the ways of life of the Greeks during the time that
intervened between the conquests of Alexander and the period of their
absorption in the Roman Empire, we should be in possession of no
evidence, documentary or material, that would throw light on this, for
us, most important of all questions: Where was it, and at what time,
that the great discovery was made—the art of blowing glass? For it was
thanks to this discovery that the material came for the first time to
take an important place among the art products and even the industries
of the day. This is a point that cannot be too often or too strongly
impressed upon the reader.
The glass vessels of the ancients rarely bear any inscription, and
there is little, as a rule, in the decoration that can give occupation
to the antiquary. Classical glass has therefore been comparatively
neglected, except when of superlative merit; the record of its
_provenance_ has generally been lost: in continental museums it has
either found a back place on the shelves of the Greek and Roman
collections, or it has been handed over _en masse_ to other
departments. We thus find crowded together in the same case delicately
turned bowls from Greek tombs, cinerary urns from Gaul or Britain, and
examples of the rudely carved and engraved glass of the third and
fourth centuries.
Such little evidence as there is, especially a few passages in Roman
writers, would point to Alexandria, above all other towns, as the
principal home of the glass industry in the first centuries before our
era. We know, however, of no find of blown glass in Egypt, previous to
later Roman or Coptic times. The Ptolemaic glass found at Tanis and
elsewhere differs, as we have seen, little from the old type; and even
at what is probably a later period we have found the same old type of
glass in use at Denderah for inlaying (see above, p. 32). It was not
the Egyptians themselves that favoured the new process—by them the new
glass was doubtless rejected as something exotic and unholy. The
Greeks, on the other hand, seem never to have taken any interest in the
material—the ‘fused stone,’ as they called it, was at the best but a
poor substitute for the native minerals that it imitated.
[Illustration:
_PLATE IV_
1. FLASK WITH “PEACOCK” DESIGN
GRECO-ROMAN
2. BOWL, FINISHED ON LATHE, SHOWING IRIDESCENCE
GRECO-ROMAN
3. BOWL OF THIN GLASS, BLOWN INTO MOULD
ROMAN]
Perhaps after all there is an element of truth in the prevalent Roman
tradition, and we should not be far wrong in giving the credit for the
introduction of the new system of manufacture to the glass-makers of
Sidon or of some other of the Phœnician coast towns.
I have already pointed out that the Greeks had at first no separate
word for glass. Herodotus speaks of ear-ornaments made of ‘melted
stone’ (λίθινα χυτά). Plato, in the _Timæus_, thinks it necessary
to explain that he uses the word ὕαλος in the same sense. In the
treasure-lists of temples, of the early part of the fourth century,
where the same word is used, the reference is apparently to vessels of
glass. We hear, too, of seals of glass (σφραγῖδες ὑάλιναι) in similar
inscriptions of the same date. The word ὕαλον ultimately became the
equivalent of the Latin _vitrum_.
In any case, it is from Greek tombs of the Hellenistic period that we
obtain our earliest specimens of glass, other than the small articles
of _verroterie_ that formed the exclusive subject-matter of the last
chapter. There have been preserved a few rare bowls of transparent
glass, sometimes quite colourless, or more often stained with blue or
with a honey-like tint resembling that of the hyacinth or the sard.
These bowls are distinguished by the purity of their outline; they have
apparently been finished on a lathe, but whether the glass was
originally simply cast, or, as is possible, _blown into_ a mould, it is
impossible to say. The only ornament consists in one or more incised
lines near the margin. A few of these bowls have been obtained in
Athens, others come from tombs in the south of Italy,—we have
unfortunately no means of fixing the date in either case. It is rather
from the refinement of their curves and the restraint in the decoration
that we are led to class them as pre-Roman.
But it is from the glass found in the tombs of Canosa that we can form
the best idea of what the Greeks of Ptolemaic times were capable in
this direction, and we are fortunate in having in London a remarkable
series of glass vessels from these tombs. Canusium was one of the few
cities of Apulia that preserved much of its Greek culture as well as
the partial use of the Greek language well into the time of the Roman
Empire. The beautiful specimens in the Glass-Room in the British
Museum, some of them so thoroughly Hellenic in character, are referred
to the first century of our era, but in general character and feeling,
as well as in their shapes, they reflect the art of an earlier period.
A bowl of pure white glass—the sharp outlines, especially of the solid
handles, show that it was finished by a cutting tool—is of a form (the
σκύφος of the Greeks) well known both in pottery and metal ware. The
two graceful bowls, decorated in gold with an exquisite design of
acanthus leaves, combined with a small plant with tendrils, both
radiating from a central flower, even in their present condition,
perhaps surpass in beauty any other known example of ancient glass.
From the technical side, the marvellous skill with which the two shells
of glass of which these bowls are built up, are fitted together, should
be carefully noted. It will be observed that the inner shell projects
considerably beyond the outer one, and that the latter at the line of
junction has been apparently levelled down by subsequent grinding. How
far the two layers have been soldered together by subsequent firing, it
would be difficult to say. Between the two shells, the gold leaf that
forms the base of the decoration has been applied. We are reminded (but
_longo intervallo_, not only artistically but technically also) both of
the so-called cemetery glass of later date, and of the ‘doubled
glasses’ made in the eighteenth century in Bohemia.
Scarcely less remarkable are the other examples of glass from Canosa
exhibited in the same case. Here may be seen two bowls built up with
coils of little rods, each rod containing an opaque white string in the
centre of a clear base; these, as I have mentioned, are identical with
the bowls, now in the Assyrian Department, brought back by Layard from
Nineveh. In addition to these varied types of glass there were found in
the same tombs some large dishes of _millefiori_ ware, and finally a
large flat bowl of white glass with a somewhat rude pattern cut with
the wheel, and with a row of spurs projecting from near the edge. This,
as will be seen further on, is a method of decoration more common at a
time of artistic decline, in the third and fourth centuries.
Quite Greek in character are the strange little unguent pots that come
from Cyprus. On the cup-like overlapping lid of one in the British
Museum may be seen outlined in black, apparently between two layers of
glass, a little cupid bearing a bunch of grapes. Although many of these
little pots have lately been found in Cyprus, it is only in a few cases
that the design on the lid, so truly Greek in style, has been preserved.
There is some reason to believe that when the use of the blowing-tube
was first introduced it was applied as a supplement to a moulding
process. The hollow vesicle of glass—the _paraison_, to use the old
French word—was blown into a more or less hemispherical mould, and the
irregularities of the resulting bowl were then removed by grinding on a
wheel. At any rate, during what we may call the Alexandrian period, a
bowl of simple outline, whether shallow or deep, is the characteristic
form. In the case of certain dishes in the shape of a boat, the wheel
has played a still more important part.
For the personal adornment of their women the Greeks continued to make
a variety of small objects of glass, more or less on the old lines. We
find, too, intaglios engraved on glass of various and often most
exquisite tints at least as early as the fourth century B.C. In the
preparation of these pastes the greatest attention was paid to the
exact imitation of precious stones. At a somewhat later date, in the
second century B.C., cameos in high relief cast in glass pastes of
various colours came into vogue. The ‘mother’ design was modelled in
clay, and upon this matrix the mould in which the glass was to be cast
was formed. These early glass cameos are compared by the late Dr.
Murray to the circular, moulded reliefs on the black pottery of this
period, and he points out that they apparently preceded the large
reliefs engraved on stones of the onyx family which were so much in
favour a little later (_Greek Archæology_, p. 160). It must be borne in
mind that neither in the case of cameo or intaglio could the paste copy
be made directly from the original stone. The paste gem, thus moulded,
was often carefully finished by hand.
EARLY ROMAN GLASS
In the absence of any continuous series of glass vessels that can be
classed as Greek, it would seem somewhat of a contradiction to say that
the artistic glass of the Romans was founded upon examples distinctly
Greek in outline and decoration. And yet there can be no doubt that in
the earlier period, at any rate, the source of inspiration of the Roman
glass-maker was the same as that of the contemporary potter or
bronze-worker. At the time when objects of glass were first brought to
Italy in the ships of the Greek traders, we may be certain that the
places where this glass was made—whether these be sought at Alexandria
or at one or more of the cities of the Phœnician coast—had been
completely Hellenised. Again, the new material found its way in through
towns which, if not Greek speaking, were thoroughly Greek in culture,
through Cumæ—in the neighbourhood of this city glass was probably
first made in Italy—and through the semi-Greek towns of Apulia. But in
one important respect this Greek glass differed from the contemporary
bronze and pottery. It was to the Greeks a new art with few old
traditions, and these not of Hellenic origin. In the first century
before Christ the industry was only beginning to be of any importance.
It thus came about that in a greater degree than perhaps any other
branch of ancient art, the manufacture of glass may be regarded as an
art essentially Roman. This fact may help to account for the extreme
poverty of the material for its history and methods of manufacture to
be found in Roman writers. There were in this case no Greek authorities
for these writers to fall back upon. Compare the meagre and confused
narrative of Pliny in the brief section that he devotes to glass with
his detailed, and in a measure scholarly, accounts in other departments
of the arts where he could borrow from earlier Greek technical
treatises.
The glass that we know as Roman was made for a period of about four
hundred years. It was manufactured at one time or another in nearly
every country into which the Romans penetrated, from Syria and
Mesopotamia on the one hand, to Spain and Britain on the other. It has
even been found in the tombs of tribes that the Romans never subdued,
as in Denmark and Sweden. There is scarcely an application of glass
known in Europe in the eighteenth century that was not known also to
the Romans, and they were masters of the various processes by which
glass may be decorated.
MILLEFIORI GLASS
M. Froehner, in his introduction to the catalogue of the Charvet
collection, has divided Roman glass into as many as fifteen classes.
Some of these divisions are perhaps rather arbitrary, and very little
success has attended any attempt made by him or by other writers on the
subject to classify the vast material on a geographical basis, still
less to trace the history of its development.
There is, however, one division of classical glass—we can hardly call
it Roman, although most of the finer specimens may be traced back to
Rome or to the tombs of Central and Southern Italy—which forms in some
degree a transition from our primitive family to the true blown glass
of imperial times. This is the so-called Millefiori Glass. We have,
doubtless, in this a development of the ‘fused mosaics’ of the
Egyptians, worked out on a larger scale, and employed for other objects
than flat slabs and fragments for inlay.
In the millefiori bowls of Greco-Roman times we can distinguish two
predominant types: the madrepore design in the first place, which
closely imitates the pattern on a polished slab of coralline limestone,
with the addition that the ground is of a deep translucent green or of
a purple of subdued tone. In this class may be placed such exceptional
pieces as the bowl from Crete, in the British Museum; here we have
rosettes of yellow, green, and red upon an opaque ground of a rich
blue. The second type is equally characteristic, but more difficult to
describe. Short, loosely rolled scrolls of an opaque white float in a
more or less transparent base, interspersed with a few quadrangular
masses of gilt glass. It would be difficult to say what natural
substance is imitated in this case—perhaps some kind of fossiliferous
_lumachella_ marble, which may have been in vogue at one time at
Alexandria. We may be quite sure that the Roman glass-workers would not
have failed to imitate the famous Murrhine vases, which seem to have
been originally carved from a natural stone, and it is among the
millefiori glasses that such imitations may probably be looked for.
These millefiori bowls are evidently built up with more or less
spirally arranged fragments of glass mosaic,[23] the individual pieces
having been probably cut from a cane of glass, itself formed by a
combination of minute rods, as in the case of the Egyptian ‘fused
mosaics.’ These pieces were arranged in the mould in a coil, starting
from the centre, but how far, if at all, during the subsequent partial
fusion, they were subjected to any blowing operation, is a moot point.
In any case, the final effect is the result of an elaborate process of
cutting on the wheel and subsequent polishing.
[Illustration:
_PLATE V_
ROMAN MILLEFIORI GLASS BOWLS, IMITATING NATIVE STONES]
In this millefiori glass the sections of the canes are arranged with a
studied irregularity (so as, in a measure, to mask the spiral
arrangement), and a further variety is given by setting up many of them
obliquely to the surface. On the other hand we can seldom, perhaps
never, find any trace of the distortion, which would inevitably be
caused by the subsequent use of the blowing-tube. In other cases, the
individual fragments may be built up of irregular longitudinal bands,
so as to give the general effect of an agate breccia, as in a fine bowl
at South Kensington. When the contorted bands are continuous we have
another important type, founded apparently upon the endless varieties
of banded agate and other native stones that have been formed by slow
deposition in the hollows of rocks. One variety imitates amethystine
quartz, but here, as elsewhere, rich combinations of colour, which can
have no prototype among natural stones, are often introduced. We have
an exceptionally beautiful example of this in certain cigar-shaped
alabastra, said to have come from Sidon. Meandering bands of emerald
green, powdered with gold, are divided by lines of white and deep blue.
Good examples of this ‘peacock’ decoration may be found in the British
Museum, at South Kensington, and in the Gréau collection.[24] Allied to
these, and still more rare, are the little globular bottles with bands
of green and gold, of which there are exquisite specimens in both our
great Museums.
In the Etruscan Museum of Gregory XVI. in the Vatican, the millefiori
glass is well represented by a series of bowls from Greek and Etruscan
tombs. There is a choice collection of fragments of millefiori and
banded glass in the British Museum,[25] and a still larger one in the
Industrial Museum at Vienna.
A broken fragment of glass will indeed often tell us more than a
complete vase. We can, for example, see from it whether the pattern
passes continuously through the whole thickness of the glass, or
whether it has been inlaid, or perhaps pressed into the surface when
hot. In one case we have a process that reminds us of mosaic work; in
the other there is some approach to a _champlevé_ enamel, only with a
base of glass instead of metal. In some rare examples we find the glass
inlay surrounded by a fine ribbon of gold, suggesting the _cloisonné_
enamels of the Byzantine jeweller. There is a minute example of this
delicate work in the Slade collection (_Catalogue_, Pl. III. No. 4).
COLOURS OF ROMAN GLASS
It is evident that the Romans had at their command a full gamut of
colours, both transparent and opaque, obtained from iron, copper,
manganese, and antimony—the same metals, in fact, as the Egyptians
made use of. But their deep transparent blue they probably obtained, in
most cases, from cobalt, a metal unknown to the latter people.[26]
There was one great deficiency, however, in their palette. They were
never able to obtain a transparent red. The ruby red derived from
copper or from gold was known to the early mediæval alchemists, but no
undoubted instance of the use of this valuable colour has been observed
in glass of the classical period.[27] The nearest approach to a
transparent red is to be found in the honey and brown-red tints
resembling the sard and the hyacinth; colours such as these are derived
chiefly from iron, and may pass, on the one hand, into a pale yellow,
and on the other into various shades of olive-green. The opaque red
glass containing a large percentage of the basic oxide of copper and
also some oxide of tin,[28] was much admired by the Romans; it was
probably the _vitrum hæmatinon_ of Pliny. In the Gréau collection is a
head of Neptune in this material, of considerable artistic merit; to
this head the oxidation of the surface has given the appearance of a
finely patinated bronze.
WALL DECORATION OF GLASS
Before going on to speak of the blown glass of the Romans, it will be
well to say something of another application of glass that found favour
among them at one time. This consisted in the decoration of the surface
of walls, and in a few rare cases of pavements, by slabs of glass of
various colours.[29] We may, perhaps, trace a double origin for this
use of the material. On the one hand, it but carried out more fully the
decoration of wall surfaces by rosettes and other patterns, both of
glass and of glazed pottery, a plan often adopted by the Egyptians.
This style was imitated with the little plaques of glass inlay, of
which so many fragments have been found among the vineyards in the
neighbourhood of Rome.[30] On the other hand, slabs of glass were used
to imitate the veneer of porphyry and other marbles, so much in use in
Rome in the first and second centuries. The two favourite stones, the
red Egyptian porphyry with white spots and the green _Serpentino_ from
the Taygetus range with large, whitish crystals of felspar, were
admirably imitated in slabs of glass often of large size; of these many
important specimens may be seen in the British Museum. This method of
decoration must have been introduced at Rome at a comparatively early
date, if we are to accept the usual interpretation of the passage where
Pliny describes the application of glass to the exterior of the theatre
built by Scaurus at the beginning of the first century before Christ.
The best known examples of this glass veneering come from the ruins of
a building some four miles to the north of Rome, generally known as the
Villa of Lucius Verus; there are many fine pieces from this source in
our museums. In private houses this veneering of glass was above all in
favour for the bath-chamber. ‘_Vitro absconditur camera_’ says Seneca,
instancing this practice as a sign of the advancing luxury of the age.
In the earlier methods each slab or tile is built up of pieces of glass
of geometrical outline; in rarer cases the adjacent pieces have been
fused together or again pressed into a base of glass by a plan similar
to that formerly used in Egypt. But when the individual pieces of glass
have been cut into shapes and then fitted together to form the design,
we have the _opus sectile_ of the Romans. We are here dealing with
something nearly approaching in character to a true mosaic, and
therefore outside the limits we have given ourselves. But it is
impossible to pass over without mention the marvellous examples of this
class of work which covered the walls of the basilica erected at Rome
by Junius Bassus, consul in the year 317. Although this building no
longer exists, important remains of the _opus sectile_ which once
covered its walls are preserved in a private palace at Rome, and some
smaller compartments may be seen in the Church of St. Antonio Abbate on
the Esquiline. These have been described in a paper read by the late
Mr. Nesbitt before the Society of Antiquaries (_Archæologia_, vol.
xlv.; see especially the coloured plate XVIII.). The main subjects,
indeed, and the ground are executed chiefly in coloured marbles, but
for us the most interesting part is the band representing embroidery
below the large picture of Hylas and the Nymphs. This frieze of small
figures is formed entirely of glass, and it will be noticed that in
this part both the subject and the treatment are Egyptian. We have here
the copy of a wall-hanging—probably of one of the heavy embroidered
_tapetia Alexandrina_. It must be borne in mind that although this work
was nearly contemporary with the Christian mosaics of the time of
Constantine, the designs must, in part at least, have been copied from
some earlier composition. The frieze of figures indeed takes us back to
the Egyptian renaissance of Hadrian’s time.
The glass of which the larger plaques of this Roman veneer were made
was probably poured out upon an even surface, rolled while hot, and at
times, but not always, subsequently polished. It may be regarded as a
primitive form of what the French call _verre coulé_, a term which
includes our modern plate-glass. The thick heavy glass that the Romans
used for their slit-like windows belongs to the same class; it is well
known that slabs of considerable size have been found in position at
Pompeii, but we are not concerned here with this purely practical
application of the material.[31]
The employment of glass for mirrors, although known to the ancients,
was, if we may judge from the few specimens that have survived, only
practised on a very small scale. Pliny says that the Sidonians had
applied glass to this purpose, but he speaks of it rather as a
curiosity than as a matter of practical importance. Some little
circular mirrors of convex glass, about an inch and a half in diameter,
have lately been found in Greek or Greco-Roman tombs at Arsinoe in
Egypt. There is one in the Musée Guimet at Paris, set in a silver frame
with a ring as if for suspension from a necklace. I do not know the
exact nature of the metallic backing (it is merely described as
_étamé_), but this is still quite brilliant. M. Garnier mentions two
mirrors mounted in wood from a tomb at Saqqarah; others of watch-glass
shape, set in frames of lead, have been found in Roman tombs at
Ratisbon.
MOULDED GLASS
Two quite distinct applications of glass fall under this head. When the
glass paste, in a fluid or semi-fluid condition, is pressed into a
mould, we have a simple process for making either imitations of cameos
and intaglios cut in precious stones, or again small articles of
_verroterie_ in no way differing from those produced by the peoples of
the Eastern Mediterranean from an early period. Most of the work
executed in this way in Roman times has little claim to artistic merit
or originality. Masks and busts thus prepared were afterwards applied
to the decoration of other objects—furniture, or even metal
ware[32]—or they were fused on to the sides of vessels of blown glass.
Much attention was given to the imitation of precious stones. In the
British Museum is a remarkable series of medallions and plaques in a
paste made in imitation of _lapis lazuli_, the _sapphirus_ of the
ancients. The colouring matter in this case would appear to be the
famous Egyptian blue, which was certainly known to the Romans (see p.
27). In one example at least we can see that the coloured paste only
formed a coating upon a base of ordinary glass, and this would point to
the former being a material of some value. The large plaque of this
blue paste, inscribed BONO EVENTUI, seems to have been finished with
the tool, but we cannot look upon it as throughout a work of the
sculptor. Heads of the Medusa or of Jupiter, viewed in full front so as
to fill the roundel, are the commonest type. The dark paste in which
some small portrait heads in the British Museum are cast is probably an
imitation of the rare black sard.
[Illustration:
_PLATE VI_
BEAKER WITH OVAL BOSSES
GRECO-ROMAN
FLASK WITH MAZE-LIKE PATTERN
FROM MELOS
PYX FOR COSMETICS
FROM SIDON ]
I have now to speak of another class of moulded glass, of what is, in
fact, a true ‘hollow ware,’ made by blowing a vesicle of glass into a
mould. This is the first time that we unmistakably come across the use
of the blowing-tube. In the case of glass it is practically impossible
to use a mould in the shaping of a hollow vessel without some such
method of forcing the viscid material into its place by pressure from
the inside. I think, therefore, that it is not unlikely that it was in
connection with some system of moulding that the blowing-tube was first
introduced. Thus combined, the process calls for less manipulative
skill than is required in the shaping of the free _paraison_ by the
glass-blower.
Moulded ‘hollow ware’ was produced at a comparatively early date in the
East. Unfortunately we have no means of determining whether the
glass-blowers of Sidon were acquainted with the process before the
first century B.C. By that date, at least, the little flasks,
_unguentaria_ or what not, blown into moulds, had completely displaced
the primitive chevron bottles that had so long been in favour. These
moulded flasks are shaped in imitation of various fruits—dates,
bunches of grapes, pomegranates—again the double scallop shell was a
favourite pattern; more rarely we find the head of a man or a woman,
especially of a negro. The glass is of various colours, but a rich
honey tint is the commonest.
Another frequent type, especially to be connected with the towns of the
Phœnician coast, is to be found in the little bottles, generally with
eight panels round the body, on which are impressed various implements
connected with the sacrifice, or at other times Bacchic emblems or
musical instruments. In one or two cases the reliefs on these flasks
have been thought to have reference to the Jewish worship. These little
octagonal bottles have been found in various parts of the eastern basin
of the Mediterranean, as well as on the north shores of the Black Sea.
The glass of which they are made tends to decompose to a white
porcelain-like mass, without further injury to the surface, a fact
which would point to its containing a certain amount of lead and
perhaps of tin. Here, for the first time in the history of glass, we
come across the name of the manufacturer—we can hardly say the artist.
It is, indeed, as might be expected, to the moulded ware that we are
indebted for the most important of the scanty inscriptions that have
been found on Roman glass; of these I shall have something to say on a
future page. Such inscriptions in relief are above all prominent on the
only other type of moulded glass which I can find space to mention. I
refer to the cylindrical cups of thin greenish glass, which were
apparently given as prizes for victory in various contests, or which
perhaps merely served as mementoes of the occasion. Among the most
interesting of this class is a series of glasses of which the best
examples have been found in England; these are surrounded by double or
triple zones, showing in relief chariot-races or combats of gladiators.
All are of late date, and are of no merit as works of art. On one,
exceptionally perfect, found near Colchester, and now in the British
Museum, above the two bands of reliefs showing the rival chariots
rounding the critical point at the extremity of the _spina_, the
inscription CRESCENS AVE—HIERAX VALE would seem to celebrate the
victory of the first-named charioteer, but it may perhaps only express
the hopes of Crescens’ backer.
The moulded hollow glass of the Romans often calls to mind the red
Samian pottery decorated with reliefs, to which it is, however, as a
whole inferior in artistic merit. The material does not lend itself
well to elaborate designs, and one misses the crisp outlines given to
glass by the cutting-tool. There is generally an air as of a cheap and
second-hand copy, which gives a very modern aspect to many of these
moulded pieces, and this is above all the case when the glass is
transparent.[33]
CHAPTER IV
THE BLOWN GLASS OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE
It is after all in the development of the art of blowing glass that the
principal merit of the glass-workers, in the age immediately preceding
our era, is to be found. By this method the real capabilities of the
material, both practical and artistic, were first disclosed. The art
was probably first practised on the Phœnician coast, perhaps at Sidon,
not long after the time of Alexander. Beside the moulded flasks of
which I have spoken above, there are others of plain globular form,
with simple short necks, which we may perhaps look upon as among the
earliest work of the Phœnician glass-blowers. Some of these are little
more than spherical vesicles of the glass as it came from the
blowing-tube. With these are associated certain plain spheres of thin
glass of various colours, which may have been used as balls by
jugglers, as mentioned in a passage in one of Seneca’s letters. But the
balls of cool glass, mentioned by other writers, held in their hands by
ladies in summer, must surely have been solid, like the spheres of rock
crystal put to a similar use by the Japanese. The next step was to give
the bulb of glass a ‘kick’ at the base, and to prolong the neck; we
have then the type of the so-called lachrymatories, perhaps the
commonest and best known form of classical glass.
There is in the British Museum an important collection of blown glass
vessels which have been found in Syrian tombs. The actual _provenance_
is here, as indeed in the case of so many other finds of glass, very
difficult to ascertain. Some of the pieces are said to come from the
neighbourhood of Nazareth, but the majority were probably found nearer
to the coast, not far from Sidon and Tyre. The forms are on the whole
classical, but Oriental influences may be seen in some cases, as in the
double _unguentaria_ which resemble certain Egyptian kohl-pots (Plate
VII.). The apparent abundance of this Syrian glass, and the clear,
nearly colourless material, point to a time rather after than before
our era.
We know that soon after the middle of the first century, all the
various forms and applications that we associate with the blown glass
of the Romans were in general use in Italy. The proof of this lies in
the vast collection of ancient glass in the museum at Naples. There
were some years ago in this collection more than eight thousand pieces
of glass, and it is constantly being added to. By far the greater part
of this glass comes from Pompeii. Now that town was destroyed in the
year 79 A.D., and it had sixteen years previously suffered so seriously
from an earthquake that little glass can have survived; we are thus
able to fix within exceptionally narrow limits the date of most of the
glass discovered in the ruins. Apart from a few elaborate examples
extracted from the tombs—some of these may well be of an earlier
date—we find a vast series of vessels adapted to various domestic
purposes, but more especially to uses connected with the storing and
drinking of wine. These are for the most part made of a transparent and
often colourless blown glass. By this time, then, the art of the
glass-blower must have been fully developed in Southern Italy. The
Pompeian glass has been well preserved by the thick bed of dry ashes,
and has suffered little from surface decomposition.
[Illustration:
_PLATE VII_
SEPULCHRAL GLASS FROM THE SYRIAN COAST
FIRST CENTURY B.C. TO FIRST CENTURY A.D.]
From a few scattered references in Roman writers we can in a measure
trace the rapid change in the position of glass at Rome, say between
the latter days of the Republic and the end of the reign of Augustus.
Cicero mentions glass as an article of merchandise brought from Egypt,
together with paper and linen. Strabo, writing under the rule of
Augustus, says that at Rome every day new processes were invented for
colouring glass and for simplifying its manufacture, so that ‘a
successful imitation of crystal may now be made so cheaply that a
drinking-glass with its stand can be sold for a copper coin’ (xvi. 25).
It is not, however, from Italy, or even from Mediterranean lands, that
the greater part of the Roman glass in our collections comes, and this
is especially the case if we confine ourselves to the ‘hollow
ware’—the true blown glass with which we are at present concerned.
Already in Pliny’s time the new industry had spread to Spain and Gaul,
where, before long, favoured no doubt by the cheapness of the fuel and
of the raw materials, important centres of manufacture must have sprung
up. We learn from Strabo that not long before his time the Britons
obtained what little glass they used—this was confined, indeed, to
articles of _verroterie_—from the Continent. But though we have no
direct evidence on this point, there can be little doubt but that
glass-works were established at least by the second century in the
southern parts of England, and that, to give one example, the large
globular and quadrangular urns of greenish glass were made at
glass-works not far from the tombs in which they are found.
Indeed, the bulk of this northern glass is of a sepulchral character.
The large size and the graceful shapes of the well-known cinerary urns
argue a complete mastery of the technical processes, and point to works
on an extensive scale where large glass pots must have been in use.
These spherical urns owe their preservation for the most part to the
fact that they were enclosed in ‘coffins’ of lead or stone. The
somewhat prosaic and ungainly square bottles that often replace them
must have been blown into a mould of some kind.
Little or no trace of local influence can be found in the shapes or the
material of the glass made in the second, third, and fourth centuries
in Gaul, in Britain, or on the Rhine. In the Glass-Room in the British
Museum, the large vessels of blown glass are chiefly of Gallic origin;
the most important come from a collection made many years ago in the
south-east of France. They may be compared with the Roman glass found
in Britain exhibited in the Central Saloon. On the whole, these large
glass urns are characteristic of the northern and western provinces.
While they appear to be unknown in Greece and in the East, in the Roman
columbaria they form a very small proportion of the urns ranged in the
niches and along the shelves.
The gigantic cinerary urns from Kentish cemeteries are only rivalled in
size by some of the Pompeian glass at Naples. Among the glass from
cemeteries in Southern Britain in the British Museum are many jugs and
bottles of quaint and original form, and others which for grace and
purity of outline it would be difficult to rival elsewhere (Plate IX.).
Notice especially the handles, and above all the insertion of the lower
end of these handles into the side of the vessel. It is the neglect of
attention to this point that so often gives an impression of weakness
to the handles of modern ware, whether of pottery or of glass. But here
the ribbed handle terminates in spreading lines that clasp the flank of
the jug like the claws of a bird of prey; I do not know of any happier
or simpler application of the viscous material. At times the central
rib of the handle is prolonged into a wing-like flange descending
nearly to the base of the vase, or may be ending in a long trail of
glass worked by the _pucella_ into quills or teeth.
A greater variety of forms is naturally found in glass made for
domestic use than in specimens destined for the tomb. It is this
variety that gives a special interest to the collection at Naples. M.
Froehner has described nearly thirty different forms of glass vessels
(_Collection Charvet_, pp. 76-80), and has attempted to apply to each
of them the distinctive classical name, both Greek and Latin. But many
of these terms are rather names of Greek fictile ware than of Roman
glass, and as to the remainder, it is rather to the Byzantine
scholiasts of later times than to writers of a good period, where
allusions to glass are rare and vague, that resource has been had. The
richest mines for information of this kind are the works of Petronius
and Athenæus—this last author gives a list of a hundred varieties of
drinking-vessels. But in both cases it is of vessels of silver or of
pottery rather than of glass that the writer is generally thinking.
As a rule, the shapes and methods of decoration of Roman glass follow a
line of their own, dependent on the ‘habits’ of the material. It is,
however, easy to recognise forms derived from pottery, and even from
bronze, in any large collection of Roman glass. Just as the so-called
Samian ware is imitated in the moulded glass bowls, so we find that a
class of pottery, common in England, in which the soft clay has been
pressed in, perhaps with the fingers, to form on the sides vertical
trough-like depressions, has been closely imitated in blown glass—such
rounded depressions are easily given to the _paraison_ by means of a
blunt piece of wood. Again, the decoration of white slip, equally
common on Romano-British fictile ware, is imitated by means of ‘trailed
stringings’ on glass, if indeed in this case the imitation is not in
some measure the other way—from glass to pottery.
Perhaps the most characteristic decoration of the earlier transparent
glass is given by a series of parallel ribs. This ‘pillar moulding’ may
be formed on the surface in various ways—by stringings partly melted
on to the surface, or by the use of a mould at one period in the
development of the _paraison_. A graceful type of these little ribbed
or gadrooned bowls—amber coloured, or again white with blue ribs—has
been found over and over again in pre-Roman tombs on both sides of the
Alps; these bowls are often seen in the museums of Switzerland and
North Italy. Apart from beads and small objects of _verroterie_, they
appear to be the earliest articles of glass exported to the Celtic
tribes of these districts, but nothing is known as to their place of
origin. In other cases such ribs or stringings, bending round the body
in a more or less gentle spiral, form a very happy scheme of ornament.
The decoration by trailed stringings—necessarily a rapid process, by
which happy effects are sometimes attained almost by accident—may be
regarded as a genuinely vitreous process. It is often combined with
fringes and toothings impressed—on the margin of the handles above
all—by the rapid and skilful use of the pincers. The commonest, and
probably the oldest, application is as a more or less closely coiled
stringing round the neck of the bottle or jug; this is convenient for
handling, and gives the appearance at least of additional strength. The
stringings on the later forms tend to hang loose upon the surface,
sometimes taking the form of hastily written characters.[34]
The cords and threadings may often be of a different colour from the
vessel upon which they are applied—they may be reduced to knots or
mere drops applied here and there. In such cases we have an apparent
approach to decoration by enamel. But the form of ornament that we are
now dealing with is applied directly to the soft _paraison_ or to the
still unfinished vessel, and the glass of which the stringings are
formed is probably of the same composition as that on which it is
superimposed.
So of the splashed or mottled ware. We have here real splashes of a
liquid material applied to the _paraison_ while still on the
blowing-tube. When the neck was subsequently shaped, these circular
markings were drawn out into ellipsoid forms, showing that this part of
the vessel was made at a later period. It is instructive to compare
this result of the work of the blowing-tube with the patterns on the
millefiori bowls. In these latter patterns we find no trace of
subsequent distortion—a proof that the glass of which they form part
has never passed through the stage of a _paraison_ or vesicle.[35]
ENAMELLING ON GLASS
I now for the first time have to treat of the decoration of glass by
enamel painting. It may be as well here to explain that in a true
enamel, as the term is used in ceramic and vitreous art, the coloured
decoration is applied to the glassy surface (either glaze or glass
body) in the form of a pigment worked up with water or other liquid.
Such enamel paints are composed, in later times at least, of a base of
silicate of lead (the flux), coloured by various metallic oxides. It is
essential that these enamels should be more fusible than the body on
which they are painted, so that when subjected to the heat of the
muffle-fire they may be completely fused, while the glass or glaze on
which they rest is not more than superficially softened. Such enamel
decoration, whether on porcelain or on glass, may vary from a mere wash
of colour on the one hand, of which it is sometimes difficult to say
whether it has ever been subjected to the heat of the muffle-fire, to a
true vitreous covering on the other, where the various colours stand
out in relief like so many jewels.
I may say at once that the Romans, as far as we know, never attained to
any great success in this method of decoration. Its full development
was reserved for the Saracens of the thirteenth and fourteenth
centuries. This is indeed the one important advance made in the
artistic manipulation of glass since ‘the palmy days of Rome.’
Not but that the Romans, and probably to some extent the Phœnicians and
the Alexandrian Greeks before them, did not draw and paint upon their
glass; but if we may judge from the rare and fragmentary examples that
have survived, they were unable to obtain much decorative effect by
this means; again, the very poverty and the paint-like quality of such
enamels as they used, have doubtless in many cases led to their total
disappearance from the surface of the glass.[36] The painting on the
cup-like lids of the little bowls from Cyprus I have already mentioned.
On a few fragments of thin glass from Egypt, draped figures have been
painted in opaque colours. Perhaps the nearest approach to an effective
use of enamel colours may be seen on two little cups found in graves of
the fourth century at Varpelev, in Denmark. These Scandinavian tombs
have yielded many interesting pieces of glass, as well as some bronze
vessels—possibly booty brought home from marauding expeditions. The
designs on these cups (they are illustrated in the _Proceedings of the
Copenhagen Antiquarian Society_, 1861) are thus described by Mr.
Nesbitt: ‘On the larger one are a lion and a bull, on the lesser two
birds with grapes.... The colours are vitrified and slightly in
relief—green, blue, and brown may be distinguished.’ (_Slade
Catalogue_, p. xvi. See also some account of glass from these and other
Scandinavian tombs in Montelius and Reinach, _Les temps préhistoriques
en Suède_.)
But the most important and the best preserved example of enamelling on
glass is to be found in a small bowl, probably of the third or fourth
century, preserved in the treasury of St. Mark at Venice. To this
important collection I shall have more than once to return.[37] The
little bowl in question—something over three inches in height—is of a
translucent glass of a winy or purplish colour. The seven larger
medallions that surround the body are filled with mythological subjects
in a fairly good classical style; the pale buff-coloured figures on a
black ground imitate an onyx cameo. Each medallion is surrounded by a
circle of rosettes of brilliant colours—blue, red, purple, and white.
The angular spaces are filled by smaller medallions, each containing a
head, and the remaining ground is occupied by a tracery of gold.
According to the Canonico Passini, this decoration is in very slight
relief, and is executed in what can scarcely be regarded as a true
vitrified enamel. The bowl has been mounted at a later time in a light
setting of silver gilt with elegant winged handles. But what is more
curious, at some time previous to the addition of the mounting, a band
of white ornament, resembling cufic letters, but apparently illegible,
has been painted round the inside just below the rim, and again outside
the base. Much of this later ornament has been abraded, although the
original decoration is well preserved, and I think that this fact is an
argument in favour of the earlier work being after all of the nature of
a true enamel fixed by fire. I describe this bowl here as I cannot see
any trace of Byzantine influence in the purely classical medallions.[38]
Finally, on a few of the gilt catacomb glasses, of which I shall speak
shortly, a little coloured enamel is sparingly applied here and there,
especially in the draperies.
ENGRAVED AND SCULPTURED GLASS
There remains one large division of Roman glass which I have purposely
left to the last. In this are comprised the engraved and sculptured
pieces, the bulk of which belong to a late time; indeed we may pass
from work of this kind to glass that is purely Byzantine in character
without any violent transition. But to return for a moment to examples
taken from quite the other end of the series, we have seen that the
glass bowls that are associated with Alexandrian-Greek and early Roman
times are mostly finished by a cutting-tool on some kind of lathe. In
the case of the bowl of white glass from Canosa in the British Museum,
closely imitating in form the well-known _scyphos_ of the Greek potter,
the handles are apparently carved out of a solid mass (cf. p. 46); a
very similar bowl in the Charvet collection, said to have come from
Cumæ, is illustrated by Froehner. Still more interesting is the large
shallow bowl or dish of white glass in our national collection; this is
again from a tomb at Canosa. A ring of some twenty spurs, each about
half an inch in height, arises from the outer margin; these spurs are
carved apparently out of the solid glass. A large rosette cut in low
relief, representing a full-blown lotus flower, covers nearly the whole
of the surface. With this work we may compare the rosettes, much more
rudely carved, it is true, on the base of some very similar bowls of
late date from the Rhine country.
Of quite a different character is the carving on those earlier vessels
of which we may take the well-known Portland vase as a type. Here the
delicate sculpture in low relief takes us back to the cameos of the
Hellenistic Greeks, which, as we have seen, were often executed in a
glass paste. But few specimens of work of this kind have come down to
us—some half-dozen in all—and of these only two are perfect. The body
of these vases is formed by two or more superimposed layers of glass,
of which the outer one, generally of an opaque white, is ground away by
the wheel of the engraver, leaving a design in low relief upon a basis
of blue or other colour.
The most famous example of this class is, without doubt, the Barberini
or Portland vase, a two-handled urn found towards the end of the
sixteenth century in a marble sarcophagus at the Monte del Grano, a
lofty tumulus some three miles to the south-east of Rome. Whether the
tomb from which the urn was extracted was that of the Emperor Alexander
Severus, who was killed in the year 225, is not of much consequence,
for the vase itself is certainly of an earlier date. The figures in
this case stand out upon a dark blue ground—we need not dwell upon the
interpretation of the subject. As Wedgwood long ago pointed out, a rich
and almost pictorial effect is given by cutting down the white layer in
places nearly, but not quite, to the blue base which then shows through
a film of the slightly translucent white paste—an effect, by the way,
that is almost lost in the imitations of this vase made in the opaque
Wedgwood ware. A curious point about this vase is the fact that the
decoration is continued over the circular base on which it stands. This
medallion-like space is filled by the bust of a youth with a Phrygian
cap wrapped in voluminous drapery. There is some doubt, however,
whether this medallion is of so early a date as the rest of the
vase.[39]
Almost identical with the Portland vase in technique and material is
the amphora of onyx glass, carved as a cameo in low relief, which was
found in 1837 in a tomb on the Strada dei Sepolcri at Pompeii. In this
case we have a limit—a _terminus ad quem_—for the date, the middle,
that is to say, of the first century of our era. But the work may well
be of a somewhat earlier time than this. The decoration is distinctly
Alexandrian in character. Notice especially the band at the lower part
with the sheep feeding under trees—in this we are at once carried back
to the pastoral poetry of Sicily. It will be observed that the vintage
scenes with the little naked ‘putti’ are placed under the handles,
while the place of honour is reserved for the beautiful design of
vine-branches, masks, and birds. The highly developed technical skill
required, especially in the preliminary blowing and ‘casing’ of the
glass, is, however, an argument against throwing back too far the date
of vases of this class.
Some fragments of another vase of a similar character were found at
Pompeii at a later date; the pieces after passing through various hands
are now in the British Museum, where they have been united to form
(with extensive gaps) an _œnochoë_ or jug, known as the Auldjo vase,
from the former owner of most of the fragments; in this case the
decoration of the parts preserved consists chiefly of vine and ivy
leaves. There are at Naples many fragments of onyx glass equal in
beauty and skill of execution to these well-known vases. Among these,
the half of a patera decorated, on a dark blue ground, with a mask
surrounded by the leaves of the Oriental plane, is of exceptional
merit. In other cases the parts in relief seem to have been cast
separately and fixed on to the surface, a technical process of quite
another nature.
In all these examples the work of the artist follows closely on the
lines of the carver of cameos—especially of those cameos where
advantage is taken of the parallel layers of the natural stone, as in
the case of the sardonyx and of the niccolo; it is for this reason that
I have described the material of our Barberini and similar vases as
onyx glass. But there was another and purer variety of quartz that was
coming more and more into favour during the third and fourth centuries.
From this time onward all through the early Middle Ages, if we are to
judge from the treasures preserved in Christian churches, to nothing
was more value attached than to vases and cups of rock crystal, often
of imposing dimensions, carved in shallow or deep relief. When once the
process of making a clear colourless glass was mastered, this natural
crystal could be very closely imitated in a material which was more
easily worked. The carvings on the great majority of the examples of
rock crystal that have come down to us—for example, the vases in the
Louvre from the Abbey of St. Denis, and those still preserved in the
treasury of St. Mark’s—are of a distinctly Byzantine, if not rather of
a Sassanian or even Saracenic character, and this style is reflected
upon much of the ‘crystal’ glass which is so often confused with the
harder stone.[40]
The Romans of the fourth century were great masters of the art of
cutting hard stones. Along with a general decline in taste and artistic
invention, there was some advance in the direction of what we should
now call applied science, and this is exemplified in the nature of the
‘metal’ and in the method of carving of the later Roman glass.
In the case of this later engraved glass, the lapidary’s wheel was
applied at times to produce a rough design by a series of burr-like
marks, or again the pattern was built up of a number of shallow, mostly
oval depressions; in other examples the glass was deeply undercut, so
that the designs appear to float round the vessel, to which indeed they
are only attached by small rods not easily visible. Of the last kind is
the work that may conveniently be called _diatretum_, although it is by
no means certain that the _diatretarii_, mentioned by Ulpian and
others, were necessarily workers in glass, seeing that carvings of this
description, whether in metal, in hard stones, or in our material, were
equally in favour at this time.
We have, unfortunately, no complete example of this undercut work
easily accessible in our public collections. A fragment, however, in
the British Museum throws much light upon the process of manufacture.
On this piece there remains a portion of the outer frame in the form of
a few letters that have formed part of an inscription; most of these
letters, however, have been broken away, and we are thus enabled to see
the base of the rods that supported them. The sharp angles of these
little rods, and the marks on the surface of the glass, point
unmistakably to the use of a cutting-tool, nor is there, I think, any
trace of soldering at the base of the rods. We must turn again to the
marvellous collection of late classical and mediæval objects that has
been so long preserved in the treasury of St. Mark’s at Venice for the
most complete specimen of this undercut glass. Here will be found a
_situla_, or bucket-shaped vessel, of slightly greenish glass, about
eleven inches in height (Plate XIV.). On the upper zone is a hunting
scene with two horsemen, treated with a certain energy that calls to
mind some of the Byzantine and even Sassanian work of the fourth and
fifth centuries. Below we have a raised network, or rather grating—for
the motive seems to be taken from a grille of iron or bronze—formed of
four rows, each built up of fifteen tangential circles bound together
at the points of contact. About half of these circles are more or less
broken, and neither on the ground nor on the supporting rods thus
disclosed was I able on close examination to discover any of those
marks of a cutting-tool so prominent on the British Museum fragment.
Indeed it is very possible that this late example may be built up of
separately cast pieces soldered on to the base.
The famous cup of _diatretum_ glass found near Strassburg was destroyed
during the bombardment of that city in 1870; it bore an imperfect
inscription in raised letters, which has been interpreted as referring
to the Emperor Maximianus Herculius, the partner of Constantine in the
empire, who put an end to his life in 310. In this case a network of
red glass and an inscription of green glass were superimposed upon a
nearly colourless ground. So in another cup preserved in the Palazzo
Trivulzio at Milan, the inscription BIBE VIVAS MULTOS ANNOS is again in
green glass, but the network is here blue. Where the detached
decoration is of a different colour from the base, the original vase
must have been of an onyx glass formed by a ‘casing’ process and of
considerable thickness, unless, indeed, we are to regard the lettering
and the network in such cases as formed separately and attached to the
base by the little rods. Perhaps the finest example of a _vas
diatretum_ is the bowl found in a stone sarcophagus at Worms, of which
the fragments are now divided between the museums of Bonn and Mainz. In
the former museum may also be seen a tall amphora-shaped vase (some
twenty inches in height), with Bacchic scenes carved in low relief,
which was found in the same coffin.
[Illustration:
_PLATE VIII_
BOWL OF OLIVE-GREEN GLASS, ON METAL STAND
LATE ROMAN]
The oviform bowl belonging to Lord Rothschild is carved in an
olive-green glass, which appears of a deep red by transmitted light. It
is surrounded by five figures in what is practically complete relief;
the subject represented appears to be the ‘Madness of Lycurgus.’ The
arms and the draperies of these figures are connected to the base by
little rods as in the previous examples, but to judge from certain
cavities in the interior corresponding to the principal external
_bossages_, the glass was originally cast in a mould.[41]
The often-quoted expression of Martial, ‘_Surrentinæ leve toreumata
rotæ_,’ written before the end of the first century, can hardly refer
to this undercut work, which seems to be all of a much later date, nor
is it even certain that the words refer to objects carved in glass
rather than in rock crystal and agate. The word _toreumata_ is used in
connection with silver and even of earthenware. So the _calices_ and
_toreumata Nili_ of the same writer (xi. 12) seem from the context to
be rather carved in some precious stone. The following lines, however,
are headed ‘Calices Vitrei’:
‘Adspicis ingenium Nili, quibus addere plura
Dum cupit, ah quoties perdidit auctor opus!’
MARTIAL, xiv. 113.
In some other references to glass in Martial’s _Epigrams_ it is
mentioned as a cheap material, and contrasted with gold or rock crystal.
As a rule, however, this late Roman glass was cut in very low relief.
The design was often given by the juxtaposition of a number of ovoid
depressions and furrows scooped in a perfunctory fashion by means of a
lapidary’s wheel of some size.[42] At times this wheel was applied so
as to make a rough burr on the surface; on the other hand but little
use was made of the simple engraved line that we find on the German
glass of the seventeenth century.
The designs on this later engraved glass are almost without exception
of the most wretched description; any interest they may have is
archæological, and dependent upon the subject treated. Many pieces,
especially in the form of shallow bowls, have been found in tombs of
the third and fourth centuries in the Rhine district, especially around
Cologne. Some of these bear inscriptions in often very faulty Greek,
but I do not think that this is a reason for inferring that they are
not of local manufacture.[43] On one cup from Cologne the creation of
man by Prometheus is represented, but the majority of the subjects are
of a more or less Bacchanalian or even of an erotic character. It has
been attempted to connect these with the _tabernæ_, the roadside
inns—places of no good repute in those days—and even to find
representations of these hostelries in certain tall and evidently
secular buildings engraved on them.
Still more curious are the spherical ampullæ on which a panoramic
landscape is roughly scratched; in every case the scene represented is
the coast-line from the bay of Baiæ to Pozzuoli, the names of the
various temples and palaces being indicated by inscriptions. (See
Froehner, p. 96.)
Most of this engraved glass dates from a time when Christianity was
widely diffused, but we rarely find on it subjects connected with the
new religion. It would seem that the associations connected with the
glass thus decorated were not such as would recommend it for Christian
use. The early fathers protested against all such elaborate and vain
arts. ‘The pretentious and useless vainglory of the engravers on
vessels of glass may well cause those who use them to tremble, and such
work should be exterminated by our good institutions,’—so wrote
Clement of Alexandria early in the third century (quoted by M.
Gerspach, p. 49). There is little to say from the artistic side for the
few specimens of engraved Christian glass that have come down to us;
their aim is purely didactic and for edification.
The wheel was sometimes employed by the Romans to form a simple pattern
by means of a series of polished ovoid depressions; when these are
placed close together, the effect somewhat resembles that of our modern
facetted glass. The resemblance is still more close when the surface is
cut with a series of intersecting diagonal furrows, as on the spherical
bottle at South Kensington, illustrated by Mr. Nesbitt in his catalogue.
I have now run through the principal varieties of Roman glass, and the
order in which I have arranged the different classes—the inlaid and
millefiori first, then the moulded, the blown, and finally, the cut and
engraved glass—is in a measure a chronological one, following roughly
the order in which these various methods of working and styles of
decoration succeeded one another, or rather were dominant, in
successive ages. I will end this chapter with a few notes concerning
the methods of preparation and the geographical distribution of Roman
glass.
As far as contemporary evidence goes, all our information on the first
head is derived from the brief and very unsatisfactory statements of
Pliny. There is, however, every reason to believe that there were few
important changes in the construction of the furnaces, or in the
preparation of the materials, during the time that intervened between,
say, the fourth century of our era and the period in the Middle Ages
with regard to which we have further sources of information. That is to
say, we may regard the comparatively adequate account of the
manufacture of glass given by the monk Theophilus, and by the
pseudo-Heraclius,[44] as on the whole applicable to Roman times. Even
at the present day at Murano, and doubtless at other glass-works little
affected by modern industrial processes, much of the old method of
working and many of the old terms remain almost unchanged. To give but
one example:—when the workman is preparing the half-liquid gathering
or ball of glass at the end of his blowing-tube, previous to inflating
it with his breath to form the _paraison_ or vesicle, he trundles the
viscous mass upon a slab of iron which rests on the ground beside his
furnace. This iron slab is known as the ‘marver’—there are similar
names for it in other European languages—and it is always understood
that the plate in question was formerly made of marble. So, no doubt,
it may have been at some remote period, but we find that the
pseudo-Heraclius, describing in the twelfth century or thereabouts the
manufacture of glass, speaks of this same plate as ‘_tabula ferri quæ
marmor vocatur_.’ Perhaps we should have to go back to the stone slab
on which the Egyptian glass was rolled to find the origin of this
‘marver.’[45]
We must now see what can be made out of the somewhat rambling account
of the origin and manufacture of glass given by Pliny at the end of his
thirty-sixth book (cap. 44-47). Pliny regarded glass as a Syrian
invention. For many centuries, he tells us, the sole source of the
principal constituent was a small tract of sand thrown up by the sea at
a spot on the Phœnician coast near the town of Ptolemais, where the
river Belus[46] flows into the Mediterranean. With this sand the
natives mixed the _nitrum_, imported oversea in cakes,[47] and thereby
for the first time formed glass. According to Pliny, these Phœnicians
were astute and ingenious craftsmen, and they, in time, took to adding
to their glass-pots the ‘_magnes lapis_, which, it is asserted, draws
to it the melted glass like iron.’ This is a statement most
characteristic of Pliny. The _magnes lapis_—magnetic iron-ore or
loadstone—is the last substance in the world any one would think of
adding to glass. But we know that the ancients knew of two kinds of
black stone, for one of which they used the masculine form
_magnes_—this was the loadstone—for the other the female form
_magnesia_;[48] and this _magnesia_, at any rate at a somewhat later
period, can be undoubtedly identified with the black oxide of manganese
(_MnO_{2}_), a substance known of old as the ‘soap of glass,’ from its
power of removing the green colour derived from iron. Now we have seen
that pure white glass, ‘cleansed’ probably by this method, had only
comparatively lately been introduced into Italy, and some confused
account of the new discovery had probably reached Pliny’s ears. ‘In the
same way,’ he continues, ‘they took to adding to the fused mass shining
pebbles, then shells and sandy concretions (_fossiles arenæ_).’ In
these ‘fossils’ we may, perhaps, recognise the source from which was
obtained the lime, an essential constituent of glass. Passing over some
obscure references to the nitre of Ophir and the copper of Cyprus,
Pliny goes on to say that the whole is melted ‘like bronze,’ in closely
grouped furnaces, and that a blackish mass of fatty aspect is obtained.
This we must regard as a preliminary frit, for we are told that the
mass is melted again in the glass-house, where the requisite colouring
matter is added to it. ‘So the work was carried on of old in the famous
glass-works of Sidon.... At times the glass was shaped by blowing, or
again it was abraded by the wheel, or carved in the manner of
silver.... Such was the ancient way of making glass. At the present day
in Italy also, by the mouth of the river Vulturnus, for a space of six
miles between Cumæ and Liternum, a white and most soft sand is
collected, which is pounded both in mortar and mill; it is then mixed
with three parts of nitrum,[49] by weight or by measure, and after
melting is transferred to other furnaces. In these the substance, now
known as _ammonitrum_, is melted and then cast into cakes. These cakes
are again fused to obtain pure glass and cakes of white glass.’
Pliny, in this confused account, where we have apparently materials
from different sources imperfectly welded together, appears to contrast
an older method of manufacture, practised formerly at Sidon, whose
glass-works he seems to refer to as things of the past, with the newer
processes now in use in Italy. It will be noted that in both cases a
preliminary frit was prepared, although the term _ammonitrum_, a word
of Greek origin, is applied to this frit in the latter case only.
‘Already,’ says Pliny, ‘the new art of melting sand with soda
(literally “of tempering sand”) has spread through Gaul and Spain.’ He
then goes on to tell, but with an expression of incredulity quite
unusual with him, the story of the discovery of a malleable glass.
According to this tale (in its earliest form), Tiberius ordered the
workshop of the man who so tempered glass that it became flexible, to
be pulled down, lest the value of bronze, silver, and gold should be
depreciated. This story was the delight of the renaissance writers on
glass. With regard to the more amplified and tragic version usually
quoted from Petronius, we must remember that the remarks put by that
writer into the mouth of Trimalchio are not always to be taken
seriously. In later days a similar tale was told of a French
inventor—in this Richelieu takes the place of Tiberius. After
mentioning the _calices pteroti_, the costly ‘winged cups’ of Nero,
Pliny gives some account (quite out of its proper place, by the way) of
obsidian, a black stone much resembling glass, which was shaped not
only into various dishes for use at the table, but also into figures of
some size—statues of the divine Augustus, for instance, for that
monarch much prized the material. _Vitrum hæmatinum_, ‘a red opaque
glass,’ is passed over rapidly. ‘White glass is made also, and murrhine
and glass resembling the hyacinth and the sapphire and glass of all
other colours.[50] There is no substance easier to work or to which
brighter colours can be given. The highest place must, however, be
accorded to the white transparent glass which much resembles crystal;
for drinking, it has driven out vessels of gold and silver.’ This
passage is of the greatest importance. We see that a pure white glass
was still, even in Pliny’s time, something noticeable. This was, as we
shall see, again the case at the time of the Renaissance, when it was
the aim of the glass-makers, all over Western Europe, to imitate the
_Vetro di cristallo_ of the Venetians.
It will be noticed that Pliny makes no mention of the method of
preparation of the alkali used in making glass (in ‘tempering the
sand,’ as he puts it). From the context it would seem that the _nitrum_
was always of the same nature as that brought by the mariners to the
Phœnician coast—this is, however, very unlikely. Nor have we any
information about the arrangement of the furnaces. These glass houses
were, however, well known to the beggars and loungers of the time—we
hear of them as places of resort in cold weather for those who had no
other way of warming themselves. In the Greek Anthology (No. 323), of
all places in the world, there is a fragment by one Mesomedes, a
contemporary and favourite of Hadrian, giving an account of a visit to
a glass-house. Just at the point where the little poem breaks off, the
workman is described as placing the molten mass between the blades of
the pincers or shears.
Strabo tells us that when he was at Alexandria—he was there, we know,
in the early part of the reign of Augustus (_circa_ 24 B.C.)—he was
assured by the glass-workers (ὑαλουργοί) that their ‘many-coloured
and sumptuous glass’ could not be made without the addition of a
certain glassy earth which was only found in Egypt, a story which
points to the jealousy of foreign competition on the part of these
craftsmen. So on the Phœnician coast he hears from some of the
wonderful qualities of the Sidonian sand, while others tell him that
one sand is as good as another. Strabo goes on to speak of the
improvements made ‘quite lately’ in the clear crystal glass of which
the manufacture had not long since been established at Rome. Compare
with this the account of Pliny; in view of his certainly rather vague
statements, we should hardly have looked for this _cristallo_ in Italy
at so early a date.
But it is neither from Italy nor from the countries bordering the
Eastern Mediterranean that the most important supply of Roman glass has
been obtained. Putting aside objects of quite local _provenance_, it
will be found that in the museums of England, France, and Germany, by
far the larger part of the glass exhibited—and this is above all the
case with the blown glass—has been found within the limits of the
ancient Gallia. Spain, contrary to what we might have expected, has
yielded little Roman glass of any artistic merit, partly perhaps for
want of systematic search. But there are few districts in France or in
the west of Germany where the exploration of Roman cemeteries has not
yielded a plentiful crop. If we travel northward from the estuary of
the Rhone by way of Arles and Nismes to Avignon, Valence, and Lyons,
then across by the country on either side of the Jura to the valley of
the Rhine, and follow that river by Strassburg to Cologne, we pass for
the whole way through a district especially rich in Roman glass. And
this is what might well be looked for. The third and fourth
centuries—a little earlier or a little later, according to
locality—are above all the great centuries for the prevalent use of
glass, and it was during this period that the central tract of country
that included the two great metropolitan cities of Arles and Trèves
began to take the prominent place that it maintained throughout the
early Middle Ages.
Even our English glass of this time, so much of which comes from
districts to the north and the south of the estuary of the Thames, may
be brought commercially at least into connection with the wealthy
provinces of Northern and Eastern Gaul. It was from these provinces
that glass was first imported, and from them, no doubt, the
glass-workers passed over to Britain.
In the case of the rich collection of Roman glass in the British
Museum, the backbone, as it were, is formed by the specimens excavated
from tombs in the neighbourhood of the lower Rhone valley—from Vaison,
near Vaucluse (the Comarmond collection), from Apt, and from Alais. At
Arles, in that district of tombs, the Aliscamps, which furnished Dante
with a well-known image, beneath the Christian sarcophagi (in these,
too, not a little glass has been found), the earlier Roman tombs lie on
the bed-rock. From these tombs numberless urns of glass, in cases of
lead or stone, have been taken, as well as many examples of glass of
rare and exceptional shapes—among others what is apparently an alembic
for use in distillation. Some of these vessels contain a red liquid
which may _represent_ at least the wine with which they were originally
filled (Froehner, p. 109). In this town of Arles, too, in the suburb of
Trinquetailles, there were probably extensive glass-works, as we may
infer from the quantity of vitrified paste there found (Quicherat,
_Revue Archéologique_, xxviii.).
To pass to the Roman cemeteries of Lyons: in the museum of that town
are some curious masses of blue frit taken lately from a tomb on the
Fourvière, which call to mind the fritted cobalt or smalt exported in
modern times from the Saxon mines. We have in the British Museum many
pieces of glass from older explorations at the adjacent suburb of St.
Irénée. There is in the Lyons Museum a sepulchral stele of much
interest found in this very district; it is to the memory of a certain
Julius Alexander, a citizen of Carthage, a craftsman in the art of
glass (_opifici artis vitreæ_). This Punic glass-blower left behind him
children and grandchildren, who doubtless followed his trade. We must
not infer too much from a single instance; we know, however, from other
sources,[51] that there was a large influx into Gaul at this time of
Semitic people, chiefly of a humble status, craftsmen and small
merchants, and that they found their way in above all by the valley of
the Rhone. These ubiquitous traders are generally referred to as
Syrians, and I think it likely that the glass trade, not only in the
south of Gaul but further afield, may have been in great measure in the
hands of Orientals of this class. This would be especially true of the
manufacture and hawking about of small objects of _verroterie_,[52] and
again of glass pastes containing lead. But perhaps also the preparation
of the more ambitious and artistic kinds of glass was in the same
hands, leaving only the common ware to the native workmen; in that case
the distinction so important in later days between the _cristallo_ and
the ‘forest-glass’ may have had its prototype in Roman times. It should
be borne in mind that these Semitic craftsmen would for the most part
speak Greek rather than Latin, an important point that I have not space
to develop here.
As we pass to Northern Gaul we find examples of a glass of a pronounced
greenish tint more and more predominating—bulky urns, square and
spherical, and jugs with ‘claw’ handles. All of these forms we are
familiar with in England. The museums of Amiens and Boulogne are
especially rich in this glass, and in Paris the local finds are well
represented in the Musée Carnavalet.
On the other hand, in the glass of the Rhine district, including of
course the Moselle, we have a return to the more varied types that we
met with in the south. Trèves was the northern rival of Arles; it
formed the centre of a rich district, including Lorraine on the one
hand and the Rhine provinces on the other, where the manufacture of
glass by the third century became an important industry. And this
district has for us a special interest, for here more than anywhere
else we have some evidence to show that the industry was carried on
without interruption throughout the Middle Ages. The museums of Trèves,
of Cologne and of Bonn, are above all rich in Roman glass, and the
German archæologists have endeavoured—and this has hardly been
attempted elsewhere—to arrange this glass in a chronological sequence.
They think that they can distinguish the following stages in the
industry:—1. Up to 50 A.D. glass was a rarity in the north, but the
millefiori and marbled glass of the south was imported to some extent.
2. After the middle of the first century, glass-works were established
for the manufacture of large urns and smaller vessels of a
‘_Natur-glas_,’ bluish rather than greenish in tint. 3. In the time of
Hadrian (117-130 A.D.) a pure white glass was introduced; this was more
liable to decay than the older bluish glass. 4. The period of the
greatest development was about 200 A.D. Many kinds of decoration were
in fashion, as zig-zag threadings on coloured glass. 5. After 250 A.D.
This was the time of the glass with the _Frontinus_ stamp.[53] The
prevailing tint is a strong green, no longer bluish; the decoration is
given chiefly by engraving and cutting; Christian subjects begin to
appear. To this period also belongs glass decorated with coloured
medallions of glass paste.
I give this scheme of classification under all reserve; the
interlarding of a period of white glass between two stages of ‘green
glass’ may perhaps be open to criticism, but at all events it is a step
in the right direction. It must be borne in mind that this Rhenish
glass belongs to the same Romano-Celtic family as that found in France,
but, as in the latter country, the Celtic element is scarcely
perceptible. The art was an entirely new one, and there was no earlier
tradition to influence the work as in the case of the contemporary
pottery, armour, or sculpture.
It so happens that the Roman glass of Gaul has been most carefully
studied in a district far away
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