Edward Dillon

“ Perhaps the principal charm of this native Indian glass arises from the violent contrast that it affords to the impeccable cristallo and to the flint-glass that have tyrannised over us so long in Europe. It is beginning at length to dawn upon us that there are other qualities than absolute transparency and absence of colour to be looked for in our material, and it is the attempt to bring these qualities into prominence that has led to the 347 development in France within the last few years of quite a new treatment of glass. ”

“ 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. ”

“ When glass is introduced, it is invariably of the simplest description. In the big altar-pieces of Giovanni Bellini, of Cima, or of Carpaccio, the glass lamps that hang from the roof are in the form of little conical cups of plain outline. Amid all the elaborate staffage of Crivelli’s pictures, the lily on the table or ledge beside the Virgin stands in a little cylindrical beaker of glass, for all the world like a modern tumbler. [148] So in the next century we may search in vain in the pictures of Titian or of Veronese for elaborate examples of Venetian glass. ”

“ To Germany from time to time during the Middle Ages came new waves of influence from the East, by various and sometimes very circuitous paths,—in Charlemagne’s time by way of Ravenna and Rome, more directly from Constantinople in the tenth century, when Otto the Great married his son to the grand-daughter of the Greek Emperor. About the same time we hear of Greek craftsmen at work in German monasteries, as at Reichenau on the lower Lake of Constance, where, by the way, a great slab of bluish-green glass, traditionally of Byzantine origin, is still preserved. ”

“ As I have already said, the gap which exists between the later Roman and the great school of enamelled Saracenic glass of the thirteenth century can only be filled by a few scattered examples from widely distant sources. The tombs now fail us, and we are thrown back for the most part upon the treasures and relics preserved in the churches of Italy, France, and Germany. Such objects represent but one aspect of the glass produced at the time: they reflect above all the skill now acquired in staining glass so as to imitate precious stones. ”

“ THE FRENCH GLASS OF THE RENAISSANCE In the history of European glass the culminating point is perhaps reached in the Venetian glass of the first half of the sixteenth century—I am speaking, of course, from the artistic point of view. For a century or more after this time our history is concerned with little else than the spread of the Italian methods of manufacture and decoration over the west of Europe. After the middle of the seventeenth century the interest becomes more and more centred in the technical and economical improvements in the manufacture. ”

“ In one department of the vitreous arts the French occupied no doubt for a time the premier place—the stained glass of their cathedrals is acknowledged to be the finest in Europe. But in our branch of the manufacture, a branch for which, curiously enough, the French alone have provided a name—la verrerie—that nation has never occupied a prominent position. Since Roman times, the first place as producers of glass vessels of artistic importance has been held in succession by Byzantine Greeks, by Saracens, by Venetians, by Germans, and for a moment by the English. ”

“ I have already called attention to the important part played by Bristol in the manufacture of glass during the eighteenth century. That town obtained at this time a unique distinction in the history of English glass, as the one spot where a distinct kind of ware—a special genre—was made. It cannot be precisely stated when the opaque white glass decorated with enamel colours was first made at Bristol; what record we have does not take us further back than the latter half of the eighteenth century. ”

“ We have, then, in this cristallo the typical glass of Venice, and here more than in any other group, whether of earlier or of later date, we find a family of glass of which the artistic merit depends directly upon the skill of the glass-blower, rather than on that of the enameller or engraver. In the simpler and earlier specimens, an undeniable charm is derived from the extreme tenuity of the material—there is an evanescent and almost ghostly air about the ‘diaphanous, pellucid, dainty body’ [147] of not a few of these glasses. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Among the many anomalies that we encounter in the course of this inquiry—and surely in no kindred branch of art history are so many met with—there is nothing more surprising than the numerous important ‘developments’ of glass of one kind or another, for which we may search in vain a rational explanation—unless, indeed, it is the corresponding fact of the unexplained barrenness of certain periods and countries where such poverty would have been the least expected. ”

“ If the Venetians of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries were complete masters of the art of enamel, how comes it that no other example of the art at all comparable in excellence to this glass has come down to us? No one, I think, now believes in the Venetian origin of the hanap de voirre en façon de Damas, of the glass vessels de l’ouvrage de Damas, or peintes à la morisque mentioned in the inventories of the French princes of the fourteenth century. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ If I trespass beyond my limits to give this rapid summary of what is known of the colours of mediæval window-glass, it is because much of it will be found applicable to the contemporary Oriental enamelled ware and to the later Venetian glass.
In view of the high technical skill thus shown in the colouring and working of the material, nothing is more remarkable than the almost total absence from our collections of any glass, using that word in the narrower sense, that we can classify as Gothic. We know, indeed, that during these centuries much glass was made in France, 134 Germany, and Italy. ”

“ It is only quite lately that the exploration of Coptic tombs has thrown some quite unexpected light on the culture of these long-neglected centuries. Not a little glass has been found, chiefly in fragments, and of these the date can only be inferred from the style of the decoration. The use of thin opaque ‘painted’ enamels, quite different from the brilliant jewel-like enamels of the Saracens, seems to have been much in vogue in Egypt at this time. What has been found is not very accessible so far, nor has much been done in the way of classification. ”

“ We can point to no example of sculptured glass that can be compared to the magnificent vases carved out of that mineral that we may see in the Louvre or in the treasury of St. Mark’s. I should be inclined to place the district where this branch of glyptic art flourished, whether we consider works of rock crystal or of glass, somewhere in what may be called Upper Western Asia—in Armenia, Georgia, or Western Persia—and to refer many of the extant examples to a date rather before than after the Arab conquest. ”

“ 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. ”

“ There are no figures of men or animals, and the colouring is for the most part confined to blue and gold. We may, perhaps, attribute these glasses to the beginning rather than the end of the thirteenth century.
Probably of as early a date is the goblet preserved at Breslau (there is a photograph of it in Von Czihak’s Schlesische Gläser) . Here there is no ornament apart from some fine arabesques of gold. This cup has long been associated with St. Hedwig, but it must not be confused with other so-called ‘Hedwig glasses,’ which, as we have seen, are carved in the manner of rock crystal. ”

“ The position of Japan with regard to glass is a unique one. It is perhaps the only country that in past or present times has taken an important place in the world of art where the use of glass, whether for practical or æsthetic purposes, has remained almost absolutely unknown. I make this statement, of course, of the country as it was before the late revolution. Nowadays the art of glass-making, like other Western arts, is practised with some success, but without, I think, any original developments which would call for notice. ”

“ Of quite another nature is the pâte de verre, a substance somewhat of the nature of a glass frit, which has 360 been made use of by the French sculptor, M. Henri Cros, in the modelling of polychrome reliefs and friezes. I say ‘modelling,’ for this strange material can apparently be worked like wax or plaster at one stage of its preparation. When cold it is of so tough a nature that a nail may be driven into it. ”

“ The Chinese glass of the eighteenth century is above all of interest to us, for upon it more than upon anything else is based the only new departure in the treatment of the material that the nineteenth century can lay claim to—the ‘New Glass,’ I mean, that has taken so important a place of late among the minor art products of France. ”

“ Neri, like all the old writers, knew of the merits of lead-glass in the preparation of pastes for the manufacture of artificial gems; in his sixty-first section he tells us: ‘Glass of lead, known to few in this art, as to colour is the finest and noblest glass at this day made in the furnace. For in this glass the colours imitate the Oriental gems, which cannot be done in crystal. But unless diligence be used all sorts of pots will be broken, and the metal will run into the furnace.’ Upon this passage Merret observes: ‘Glass of Lead! ”

“ Now although, continues Sandrart, these artists had brought to perfection the art of glass-cutting as far as it depended upon judgment and drawing, yet in consequence of the too powerful and clumsy machinery made use of by them, even they were unable to give grace and charm to their work. When we consider the big heavy wheels that they were fain to employ—turned by those still flourishing weeds, their loutish assistants—we may well marvel at the work they turned out. ”

“ 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. ”

“ We have seen how little can be learned from the works of contemporary Venetian painters, of the famous glass of Murano (p. 202) . But in the north it is quite otherwise; not only in the pictures of the still-life painters, but in genre scenes, and sometimes even in paintings of a devotional character, we meet with carefully drawn examples of glass. It thus happens that the works of the Flemish and Dutch painters of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries throw a great deal of light upon the kinds of glass to be found both in the village alehouses and on the buffets of the wealthy. ”

“ The island owes its chief renown to its glass-works. It was a famous discovery to make glass that should vie with crystal in clearness. Since then the nimble wit of the workmen and the never-resting care to find something new have led them to apply to the material a thousand various colours and shapes without number. Hence the calices, the flasks, the canthari, the ewers, the candelabra, the animals of every race, the horns, the beads (segmenta) , the bracelets, etc. ”