I will now pass in review some of the more famous specimens of Saracenic glass.

Of the ‘Goblet of the Eight Priests,’ now in the museum at Douai (figured in Gerspach, p. 107), we have an earlier record than in other cases. It was bequeathed by one Marguerite Mallet, early in the fourteenth century, along with other property, for the endowment of that number of chantry priests. The case of cuir bouilli in which the goblet is preserved is a remarkable specimen of the French art of that time. The inscription on this cup is unfortunately now illegible.

For the ‘Glass of Charlemagne,’ which has passed from the treasury of an abbey near Chartres to the museum of that town, it is claimed that it was presented by Harun-ar-Rashid to the great Emperor. M. Schefer many years ago made this cup the starting-point of a special memoir, in which he collected a mass of information from Arab sources. This essay may perhaps be regarded as the earliest example of any intelligent interest in this class of Oriental glass.

The ‘Luck of Eden Hall,’ long preserved in the home of the Musgrave family, has acquired a certain factitious celebrity from a legend that has served as the theme of more than one ballad, none, however, of any great antiquity.^[117] Like the Douai cup, it is preserved in a leathern case—in this instance not of earlier date than the beginning of the fifteenth century. The ‘Luck’ is figured in Lysons’s Magna Britannia, vol. iv.

These three goblets form a compact group. In all of them the decoration is simple, consisting chiefly of interlaced bands or straps forming geometrical patterns. 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.

I now come to a more elaborately enamelled group, in the decoration of which the human figure plays an important part.

In the GrÜne GewÖlbe at Dresden are two beakers or hanaps of this class, set in rich silver-gilt mountings of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Round one of these cylindrical beakers runs a spirited frieze, with polo-players, mounted on brown, white, and yellow horses; above is a cufic inscription in gold on a blue ground (Plate XXV.). On the other beaker, probably the earlier of the two, we see a group of brilliantly clad turbaned figures seated by a flowing stream—the water is naÏvely rendered by a meandering line of blue enamel; the background is formed by a flight of aquatic birds. On both these glasses, beside the usual gamut of colours—gold, blue, red, green, yellow, and opaque white—we find some mixed brownish tints.

Somewhat taller than these Dresden hanaps is the beaker at WilhelmshÖhe (it is some nine inches in height). The decoration—an al fresco wine-party with musicians—calls to mind one of the groups of figures on the WÜrzburg flask. Somewhat similar is the beaker preserved in the picture gallery at Cassel, but the enamels on this are distinctly poorer.

A beautiful beaker of this class came to the British Museum with the Waddesdon collection. It stands upon a French-Gothic mounting of the fourteenth century. We see a prince seated on his throne, with attendants on either side. The glass is colourless and clear, and among the enamels a palish green, applied as a thin wash, should be noted.^[118]

Since then another goblet of this class has been acquired by the British Museum. This cup is said to have been dug up in the neighbourhood of Aleppo. The glass is much decayed, in this forming an exception to the other goblets of the class. The design includes two conventional palm-trees, whose trunks are built up of a series of nodes.^[119]

On a goblet from Coptos, in the same collection, a number of little fish in grisaille or dull red constitute the sole decoration. There is a fragment of glass similarly decorated at South Kensington, which came, I think, from Achmin. We find the same little fishes again on a cup of glass, described as a godet À l’huile, lately added to the Louvre collection.

These examples practically exhaust the list of the lamp-shaped goblets of undoubted Oriental origin. But it would be impossible at this point to pass over the absolutely unique cup from the Adrian Hope collection, decorated with a seated figure of the Virgin. This goblet is now in the British Museum, and it is there described as Venetian of the thirteenth century (Plate I.). The glass, somewhat thick and slightly greenish in hue, with a few drawn bubbles, in no way differs from that of the beakers already described.^[120] So of the shape and of the quality and colours of the enamel. The slight ‘kick,’ however, at the base is normal: that is to say, there is no aperture (see above, p. 159); the cup, therefore, needs no rim or stand. As regards the decoration, we find, in addition to the usual colours, an inscription in Gothic lettering, now quite black, but originally executed in silver. I shall return to this cup in the next chapter. I mention it here as I am inclined to find for it an Oriental provenance.

I have dwelt at perhaps disproportionate length on this special type of goblet. We have here, however, a group from a historical point of view, of exceptional interest.

A small damaged goblet of cylindrical shape at South Kensington forms a transition to the group of larger beakers. It bears a series of medallions of blue enamel containing a curious design—a bird of prey seizing a duck. The cylindrical goblets with projecting collars do not present any special point for remark. There is some reason for regarding the quaint little flasks, with narrow swelling necks, as an early type. There are two of this class at South Kensington; in both cases the glass is much decomposed. Better preserved is the little bottle with the red eagle figured in Schmoranz (Plate vii.); the evidence, however, for the early date (1217) given to it is not quite conclusive.

It is not known at what time the large pilgrim’s bottle in the Domschatz of St. Stephan at Vienna was brought from the Holy Land (Schmoranz, Plate iv.). Much of the surface is left undecorated, and the glass is whitened by the chalky earth with which it is still filled. This earth is reputed to have come from Bethlehem, and to be stained with the blood of the Holy Innocents. The main design of musicians, seated beneath a conventional tree beside a stream (represented by a blue meander), calls to mind the decoration of one of the Dresden beakers. Near in style to this flask is the quaintly shaped pilgrim’s bottle in the British Museum, that was long in the possession of a noble family at WÜrzburg. I have already spoken of the superlative quality of the enamel on this remarkable example of Saracenic glass.

In the cathedral at Vienna is another enamelled vase (Schmoranz, Plate xiii.). This graceful amphora-shaped vessel follows exactly on the lines of the water jars of earthenware still in use on the coasts of the Mediterranean. The blood-stained earth that it once contained is gone, but the seal of attestation remains—strong evidence that the bottle was purchased at Bethlehem by the German pilgrim who brought it home. The blue is of a poor greyish tint, and the enamels on the whole low in tone, but the interlaced geometrical design is not the less decorative.

The little jug (Schmoranz, Pl. xxx.) now in the hands of one of the Rothschild family in Paris, was purchased at the Hamilton sale for £2730; in the catalogue it was described as a specimen of Venetian glass! The enamels are brilliant and well preserved—polo-players, mounted on horses of various colours, surround the body. A curious feature is a collar of wood round the base of the neck, kept in place by a series of claw-shaped projections.

The larger bottles with tall necks form a class by themselves; they are often remarkable for the delicacy of the decoration. On the neck of a tall and richly enamelled example in the museum at Vienna (Schmoranz, Pls. vi. and vii.) we find a distinctly Chinese motive:—in addition to the well-known phoenix may be seen a curious development of the cloud pattern, in the shape of four many-coloured bars. There is a fine example of these long-necked bottles at South Kensington and another in the British Museum. The first is remarkable in combining on the same piece motives from many sources—the Chinese phoenix, the so-called Egyptian hieroglyph, together with birds and animals in many styles (Plate XXIII.).

The bowls and dishes form a more miscellaneous group. These we may regard as essentially ‘table ware.’ In Persian manuscripts—in the illustrations to Hariri’s tales, for instance—we see such vessels piled up with fruits and cakes.

The shallow plate belonging to Lord Rothschild is perhaps the oldest example of this class in our collections. The medallions, skilfully filled with groups of lions attacking deer and with other similar subjects, are distinctly Byzantine, or some would say Sassanian, in character.

An interest of another kind may be found in a pair of dishes, one bowl-shaped, the other in the form of a tazza mounted on a tall foot, which have long stood side by side in the Cluny Museum at Paris. These are undoubtedly specimens of enamelled Saracenic glass, both probably dating from the fourteenth century, the bowl, however, somewhat earlier than the tazza. This latter vessel is decorated with a gold arabesque combined with the thick translucent blue enamel and the red lines so characteristic of Saracenic glass. A label, however, still proclaims this tazza to be ‘Style Arabo-Venitien, XV^me siÈcle.’ On the other hand, no less an authority than Labarte (Histoire des Arts Industriels, iv. p. 546), it is true as long ago as 1864, found in this tazza an example of one of the processes of enamelling described by Theophilus, and on this ground deliberately declared it to be a Byzantine work. On the basis of a vague inscription found on the companion piece—the deep bowl—a whole theory of the Egyptian or Byzantine-Egyptian origin of this enamelled glass has been built up by a German writer (Carl Friedrich, Die Alt-Deutschen GlÄser).

There is in the British Museum a large deep bowl with a gigantic cufic inscription in blue, overlaid with scrolls of white enamel. The coarsely executed but effective decoration calls to mind that on some of the Cairene mosque lamps. This bowl is known to have come from Damietta, and it may perhaps supply an argument for those who find the origin of some of the enamelled glass in the neighbouring town of Mansourah, where glass-works are known to have existed (Lane-Poole, Arab Art, p. 209).

We have finally a class of high-footed bowls with lids; of these, unfortunately, no undamaged example is known; the nearest approach is perhaps the bowl with a perfect lid but defective foot in the British Museum. The decoration in this case is of great interest. The medallions in the field, with fleurs-de-lis, Chinese phoenixes, and quaint monster-sphinxes and griffins, should be especially noted.

Mosque Lamps

I now come to the Mosque Lamps, and here a more numerous family has to be dealt with. In those instances where the lamps can be traced back to well-known buildings in Cairo, or again when they bear the names of Memlook sultans or of great officers of their court, a date can generally be assigned without much hesitation.

A small lamp in the Arab Museum at Cairo, decorated with red lines—apart from this there are only a few jewel-like spots of enamel—bears a dedication which may be referred to either the beginning or the end of the thirteenth century; in either case this lamp is probably the earliest known to us (Schmoranz, Pl. XV.). Next in order come those bearing the name of the Sultan Malek Nasir (the successor of Kalaoun), whose long reign extended (with some interruptions) from 1293 to 1341. On these lamps the polychrome decoration is already fully developed: along with them must be placed those bearing the name of several of this sultan’s emirs. To the reign of the Sultan Baybars II. (1309-1310)^[121] probably belongs the beautiful lamp of deep cobalt blue glass that Mr. Pierpont Morgan obtained from the Mannheim collection. There is only one other example, as far as I know, of enamelling on a dark blue ground,—a lamp of nearly the same date formerly belonging to M. Goupil.^[122] The only specimen apparently in our English collections of a lamp of so early a date is the beautifully enamelled example at South Kensington (Myers bequest), the inscription on which probably refers to the same Baybars.

By far the greater number of these lamps date from the latter half of the fourteenth century. We have seen that the famous mosque built by Sultan Hassan (1347-61) has provided numerous examples to our collections. In these we already find less delicacy and detail in the decoration, but the broad and effective treatment is well suited to the position in which these lamps were placed, suspended as they were from the arcades of spacious mosques.

The period of decline that set in after this time is usually associated with the advance of Timur (Tamerlane). When in the year 1400 Damascus was taken by that ruthless conqueror, we are told that he transplanted to his new capital of Samarkand whole regiments of skilled Syrian artisans, and among these the glass-workers are definitely mentioned. Others of these men may have fled to Egypt; in any case the art lingered on in that country for another hundred years. According to Schmoranz, the latest known example of this school of Oriental enamelled glass is a lamp from the mosque of KaÏt Bey (1467-1495), now in the Arab Museum at Cairo. In this specimen we see the art in the lowest stage of decay.^[123]

The rise and fall of this great school of enamellers on glass covers but a brief period—a glorious interlude in the long story of the glass-workers of Egypt and Syria. In the latter country after this time, they appear in a measure to have fallen back upon the older and more primitive methods, handed down, perhaps, from the days of Phoenician and Egyptian domination. I have already spoken more than once of the still existing glass-works near Hebron on the high plateau to the west of the Dead Sea.

There remain, however, to be mentioned one or two mosque lamps which depart from the normal type.

In the lamp (now at South Kensington), apparently of green jade-like glass, which was brought with so many others from Cairo by the late Captain Myers, the effect is obtained by a wash of green translucent enamel over the whole of the inner surface. The outside is covered with an effective but somewhat summary decoration in gold and red lines, without further enamelling. The Sultan named in the laudatory inscription may be either Sultan Hassan or his father Nasir.

Another exceptional lamp now in the museum at Cairo is well illustrated in Schmoranz’s great work (Pl. xi.). This is a smallish lamp of green cloudy glass; the whole of the body and neck, except a plain band at the top, is worked into shallow, wavy ribs. It bears no enamel, but on the surface there are traces of the gilding that formerly covered it: this lamp came from a mosque built in 1363. At South Kensington are two small lamps of colourless glass of somewhat abnormal form without decoration of any kind.

I must finally mention the charming little lamp from the Myers collection (now at South Kensington) which, it is stated, was found in a Christian monastery in Syria (Plate XXXIV. 1). The thin clear glass, with pearly patina, the graceful, vase-like form, and, above all, the sparingly applied but quite exceptional decoration, in which the human figure finds a place, distinguish this lamp from the ordinary Cairene type. In this case the treatment of the figures, which, as I have said, are never found on true mosque lamps, closely resembles that on the inlaid metal-ware made at Mosul in the thirteenth century.^[124]

And this carries us back to the question of the origin of this enamelled glass, and we are brought face to face with quite a number of interesting problems which can only be indicated here. That the application of enamels to glass by the Saracens was prior to the use of similar materials on porcelain by the Chinese, I have already mentioned. It is, indeed, not impossible that this method of decoration may have been suggested to the Chinese potters by specimens of the Saracenic glass which, as we now know, found their way to China at an early date. The use of enamels of very similar constitution on metals had, however, been known in certain parts of Europe since the first century of our era if not earlier, and the cloisonnÉ enamels of the Byzantines had long been famous. In this connection, too, we must not forget the vitrum plumbeum with which the Syrian Jews manufactured artificial gems. It is to materials of this kind, true lead-fluxed enamels, that we must look for the origin of the decoration on Saracenic glass, rather than to the paint-like colours occasionally used by the Romans and Byzantines.

We may safely associate the apparently sudden appearance of this richly decorated enamelled glass with the change that came over the other arts of the Saracens about this time, and Dr. Lane-Poole is probably right in connecting this change with the rise of the Kurdish and Tartar families who played so important a part in the history of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries (Art of the Saracens, p. 127 seq.). Nur-ed-din, who ruled at Damascus and Aleppo in the twelfth century, came from the stock of the Beni Zenky, who adorned their coinage with figure subjects taken from both Byzantine and Persian sources. His successor, the great Saladin, came of the Ayubi stock that had ruled in Mesopotamia. Both families brought with them the traditions of Sassanian art and a complete freedom from the religious scruples of the earlier Semitic rulers. A little later the great Monghol invasion of Genghis Khan, who founded a new dynasty in Persia, opened the way to other influences, this time from the Far East. During all this period, the civilisation of the Frankish West was fighting its way into Palestine and Northern Syria. It would be difficult to find a parallel case in history—a case, I mean, of as many exotic influences as were now brought to bear upon Syria and Egypt, at work at the same time and in the same country. In both lands one result was an outburst of artistic splendour. This, in the first country, came to a premature end with Timur’s devastating campaign. In Egypt this glorious period lasted somewhat longer; but already in the fifteenth century the Memlook sultans had returned to the stricter rule of the faith, and by the next century, when after a period of turmoil Egypt fell under Turkish rule, the short-lived art of enamelling on glass was already extinct.

How completely this was so we may learn from an interesting document discovered some time since by the late M. Yriarte in the Venetian archives—amid the inexhaustible store now preserved in the old convent behind the Frari Church (La Vie d’un Patricien de Venise au XVI^me SiÈcle, p. 147 seq.). In the year 1569, Marc Antonio Barbaro—that type of a Venetian noble, the liberal patron of artists and writers—was ambassador at Constantinople. The document in question is a despatch addressed by him to the Venetian senate; on it he has drawn in outline two designs for lamps—one a somewhat depressed version of our old mosque type, the other what M. Yriarte calls a ‘godet-lampe’ of elongated form,—in fact, a version of our ‘spear-butt’ or cup-lamp suitable for fitting into a wooden or metal frame. Barbaro urges the senate to see to the execution at Murano, with the greatest care, of as many as nine hundred pieces after these designs, for the demand came from no less a person than the Grand Vizier himself. There is no reference, in the order for these lamps, to any enamelling: those that are not plain (schietti) are to be decorated in the Venetian way (a reticelli).^[125]

The old form was, however, kept up in those beautiful mosque lamps of fayence, Rhodian or Damascan in style, of which we have a few rare examples in our museums; these, I think, were made in the days of Turkish rule, in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.

I shall return in a subsequent chapter to the later glass of the Mohammedans—that of Persia and of India—glass that was for the most part influenced by Venetian models, in part even made by Venetian workmen: it would be hardly possible to treat of this glass before we have said something of its European prototype. We know practically nothing of any mediÆval Saracenic glass other than the enamelled ware of Syria and Egypt. The little bowl of amber-yellow glass in the British Museum, enamelled with the figure of an angel, was considered by Franks to be Persian ware of the fifteenth century (Plate XXVII. 1). With it we may compare the already mentioned sphere from a lamp-chain in the same collection which is of very similar glass. The decoration of the first object is distinctly Persian, but its origin may be sought, perhaps, in the Tabriz district or even further north in Georgia, rather than in the more southern and eastern districts where, under Venetian influence, a glass industry sprang up in later days.

A few fragments of glass have been brought from excavations made on the site of the old city of RhÉ, or Rhages, which was destroyed by Hulaku Khan in 1250. But there is little to be found among these that has any bearing upon the interesting question of a mediÆval Persian glass industry, nor do I think that the evidence of so early a date for all these fragments is by any means conclusive. In the rubbish-heaps of Fostat or Old Cairo, which, like those of RhÉ, have yielded so many interesting potsherds that throw light on the early history of pottery, many pieces of glass have been found, among them some fragments of bracelets. These are of two types, in one case of the primitive Hebron character, in the other built up of twisted rods of reticelli glass,—these last may undoubtedly be referred to Venice. For the rest, these Fostat fragments point to a local manufacture of somewhat rough glass of brilliant hues, but the enamelled glass of which we have treated in this chapter is, as far as I have had opportunity of judging, conspicuous by its absence.