Before taking up the subject of Venetian glass, it will be well to say something of another early Italian centre of the industry. It is only of recent years that the important part played in the sixteenth century by the glass-workers from L’Altare, in spreading the new methods through France and the low countries, has been made manifest.

L’Altare is a little Ligurian town, situated a few miles to the north of Savona. It belonged in the Middle Ages to the Marquis of Montferrat, and the relation of that family both with France and with the East should not be forgotten in this connection. According to the local tradition, the glass industry was established as far back as the eleventh century by a body of immigrants from Normandy, and a French origin has been found for the names of the families employed in the glass-works.^[126] At a later date, probably in the fourteenth century, other workmen came from Murano, so that when by the end of the fifteenth century the skilled glass-workers of L’Altare began to seek employment in foreign countries, they became the principal agency by which the newer methods of the Venetians were introduced into Northern Europe. These Altarists must indeed have been a thorn in the side of their Muranese rivals, for, abandoning the stringent regulations by which the Venetian government sought to hinder the emigration of their glass-workers, at L’Altare the self-elected consuls of the craft farmed out their men to foreign states and towns, receiving a substantial payment in return.^[127]

I do not know of any specimens of glass, either of mediÆval or renaissance date, that can be attributed with certainty to the town. At the present day, however, L’Altare is an active centre of the glass industry. Signor Bordoni gives a list of thirteen old families—he himself belongs to one of them—who still carry on the craft. These houses have agencies all over Northern Italy and even in South America.

Glass has been made at Venice, or more strictly at Murano, for at least seven hundred years; but what we especially think of as Venetian glass—the graceful vessels of endless variety of form, thin and diaphanous, in which the skill of the glass-blower attains its most complete expression—these were the produce of a comparatively short period, of the sixteenth century above all. During the last fifty or sixty years of the preceding century the Venetians in their enamelled glass were able to give expression to the spirit of the quattro-cento, but of the glass that was made before that time practically nothing is known. After the end of the sixteenth, or at latest the middle of the next century, the art enters into a period of gradual decline, which continued until the partial revival of our own day. But before that decline had set in, Venetian glass-workers had spread over Western Europe, and had revolutionised the art of glass-making. The history of modern glass begins with that of the Venetian cristallo in the sixteenth century.

It is to the Venetian archives that one must turn for information if the attempt be made to trace the early history of the glass industry of that city, and these archives have been explored by a succession of native inquirers.^[128]

For the earlier periods the negative evidence is of some importance. There is no reference of any kind to the manufacture of glass before the thirteenth century,^[129] although by this time a great part of the interior of St. Mark’s had been covered with mosaics. Like the enamels of the Pala D’Oro, we may probably look upon the earlier Venetian mosaics as of Byzantine origin. After the capture of Constantinople in 1204, the Venetians obtained a firmer grip upon the trade of the Eastern Mediterranean. Their factories had long been established on the coast of Syria. ‘When Sidon fell,’ says Mr. Horatio F. Brown, ‘the Venetians received from Baldwin, King of Jerusalem, in return for their assistance, a market-place, a district, and a church. This was in fact the nucleus of a colony living under special treaty capitulations’ (Cambridge Renaissance, vol. i.). This happened early in the twelfth century. I shall have something to say later on concerning the relations of the Venetians with the Latin principalities of Northern Syria towards the end of the next century, when the republic engaged to pay the ‘dhime’ for the broken glass that they exported. It was during this period, and under such influences, that the manufacture of glass was established in the republic.^[130]

Early in the thirteenth century there is evidence of the existence of a guild of glass-blowers. In 1224, twenty-nine members of the Ars Friolaria were fined for breaking the rules of the trade. In 1268, the chronicler Martius da Cavale tells us, the maestri vitrai Muranesi, on the accession of the Doge Lorenzo Tiepolo, bore in procession ‘ricche girlande di perle ... e guastade ed oricanni ed altrettali vetrami gentili’: water-bottles and scent-flasks and other such graceful objects of glass.

In 1279 we hear of German pedlars at Venice—Todeschi qui portant vitra ad dorsum—but each man was only permitted to carry off ten lire worth of glass at a time.

Meantime, as in other mediÆval towns, the question of allowing dangerous trades to be carried on within the city bounds became a pressing one at Venice. The newly constituted Maggior Consiglio—it was soon after the famous firmata—issued a decree ‘quod fornaces de vitro in quibus laborantur laboraria vitrea’ should be all destroyed within the state and see of the Rivo Alto. But this apparently was found to be too extreme a measure, for in the next year the decree was modified so as to allow of the manufacture of small objects (Verixelli—the French verroterie) in little furnaces (fornelli) under certain conditions, and this modified regulation remained in force until the eighteenth century. The privileged position of Murano, which lay outside the see of Venice, was thus firmly established.

About this time, too, we hear of furnaces worked by expatriated Venetians at Treviso, Ferrara, Padua, and Bologna, where factories had been already established, sometimes under treaty with Venice. It will be remembered that as yet the republic had no territory on the mainland of Italy.

There have been some differences of opinion as to what kind of glass was produced at this time in Venice—in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, I mean. Without prejudging the question as to whether anything in the nature of enamelled glass was yet known, we have evidence for the following statements:—that the preparation of various descriptions of beads constituted at that time, as indeed it has ever since, the main staple of the industry; that in the second place, the blowing of hollow ware for general use already gave occupation to a separate guild of workmen; and that finally the members of both these guilds, together with the makers of the rui—the little panes of thick green glass (similar to our ‘bull’s eyes’) still to be seen in the windows of many old palaces in Venice—were devoting themselves to perfecting certain new discoveries. These related above all to the manufacture of mirrors of glass, backed with lead, of which I have already said something. Again, the making of lenses, the oglarii di vitro or lapides ad legendum, now became a distinct industry. It was at this time (for instance in the year 1300) that we find the Cristallai di Cristallo di Rocca complaining of the competition of the glass-makers. These carvers and polishers of rock crystal were already established as an important guild in Venice; they looked upon the glass-workers as intruders. On the other hand, the efforts of the latter to imitate the nobler material had no doubt an important bearing on the development of Venetian glass, for it was as a consequence of their success in making an absolutely white transparent ‘metal’ that the Venetian glass-makers first acquired a European fame. It was this cristallo di Venezia that revolutionised at a later time the glass of Europe. At an early date, in spite of edicts forbidding its sale to the Todeschi, the unworked material, en masse, found its way into Germany, there to be worked up after remelting. Already in the fourteenth century the water-power of Alpine streams had been applied to the grinding and polishing of glass, as, for example, at Cortina d’Ampezzo in the Italian Tyrol. The glass-makers at the same time, or a little later, came into competition with the carvers of jasper and agate, which stones they imitated by means of ingenious combinations of coloured glass (smalti).

So far there is no evidence that the newly developed art of enamelling on glass had passed from the Syrian coast to the Lagoons. The Venetian glass-makers were still working on other lines, and with other aims. In view, however, of the close commercial intercourse of the Venetians with the coast cities of Syria,^[131] we may well imagine that some attempts were made to imitate the brilliant enamels of the East. But the successful handling of these colours was not a matter to be easily learned. There were as yet no handbooks to teach the composition of the coloured fluxes, to say nothing of the various devices and ‘wrinkles’ to be mastered before the enamels could be successfully applied to the surface of the glass. In the Aldrevandini beaker in the British Museum we may perhaps see an attempt to overcome these difficulties. The ‘metal’ itself is here quite of a Venetian type, thin and absolutely white, although disfigured by the black specks so characteristic of early Venetian glass. There is no trace of Oriental influence in the decoration; the three heater-shaped shields have charges—keys, antlers, and fesses—that have been traced back to certain Swabian towns, but the inscription in Gothic letters—? MAGISTER ALDREVANDIN’ ME FECI—points to a Venetian origin. On the ground of the heraldry and of the inscription, a date of about the year 1300 may be ascribed to this goblet. The enamels, it should be noted, are of the poorest description; all the well-known Saracenic colours are imitated, it is true, but with a striking want of success.

Compare with this goblet the cup from the Hope collection that stands near it in the Glass Room. The glass is thicker than in the last example, it is of a slightly greenish tint, and contains a few elongated bubbles. The decoration is in its way masterly: on either side of a throne on which is seated the Virgin with the Child in her lap, stands an angel holding a tall candle; beyond are the figures of St. Peter and St. Paul. As to the style of the decoration, it is to my mind distinctly Western; the figures might be taken from a French missal of the thirteenth century. The Arte Francisca was no doubt coming into favour in Venice at this time, but even in the fourteenth century it was regarded as something exotic, and I doubt if it was as yet practised by Venetian craftsmen who, in the minor arts, long adhered to Byzantine models. When we come to examine the technique of the enamels, we are at once struck with their resemblance to those on the Saracenic glass of the period. We have here the work of one who was master of his craft; above all, the quality of the blue enamel should be noted and compared with that on the Aldrevandini goblet.

I think, then, that both the glass and enamel of this cup are the work of Syrian craftsmen, possibly working at Venice, but more probably at the court of one of the Frankish princes who held fiefs in Syria during the thirteenth century,—at that of Bohemond VI. possibly, prince of Antioch and Count of Tripoli, or of his son Bohemond VII., who celebrated his marriage with a noble lady from Champagne only a few years before his expulsion by the Saracens. It was in 1277, under the rule of the former, that the treaty was drawn up that contains the often-quoted—and misquoted—words, ‘Et si Venitien trait verre brizÉ de la vile, il est tenuz de payer le dhime.’ What is more likely than that such a goblet may have been made by some Jewish or perhaps Christian glass-worker for a nobleman of this thoroughly French court?^[132]

Such an origin may help to account for the fact, otherwise somewhat difficult to explain, that this goblet is a unique example of its class. 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. These were evidently decorated in an Oriental style. We must also remember that before the end of the thirteenth century the Christian rulers were finally driven out of Syria; there was therefore only a brief period during which such a goblet decorated with Christian motives could have been made in the East.

When some century and a half later the Venetians began freely to decorate their glass with enamels, we note an entire change both in the colours and in the nature of the fluxes used. To this point I shall return later on, but I may call attention here to the almost total absence of Oriental influence in the designs found on the Venetian enamelled glass of the fifteenth century. This is the more remarkable when we remember that at this time as regards other arts—their inlaid metal-ware and the stamped leather of their bookbindings, to give but two instances—not only is this influence strong, but we know that Oriental craftsmen were at work at Venice. I think that one simple explanation may be given of this apparent anomaly, namely, that by the time the Italians took to the practice of enamelling their glass, that art was practically extinct in the East.

It was during the course of the fourteenth century apparently that the glass-workers organised themselves into separate guilds or arti, governed by the rules set out on the Matricola or Mariegola. It is from these matricole that the little we know of the Venetian glass of this time is derived.^[133] The glass-workers now obtained many important privileges, and the town of Murano was granted a considerable measure of self-government; but it was not till the year 1445 that these rights were fully established. Each arte was governed by an elected guastoldo, assisted by three superintendents, to whom it fell among other duties to bring the petitions and complaints of the glass-workers before the Great and the Lesser Council at Venice. Not the least important duty of the guastoldo and his lieutenants or compagni was the periodical selection of the proof-pieces—the prove—to be made by the apprentices of the various arti before they could claim rank as masters. These tasks were inscribed in the Mariegole, and from them Signor Cecchetti, in his often-quoted paper, has extracted many examples. To give an instance: the Maestri di Rulli (Rui, small window-panes) had among other things to make ‘due occhi di bo,’ an early instance of the term ‘bull’s eyes.’ But the technical terms employed in most cases render the interpretation very difficult. Some of the strange-shaped vases in our collections may not improbably be examples of such proof-pieces.

After this time the working year—the period during which the furnaces were kept constantly alight—was confined to nine months; this was afterwards prolonged to forty-four weeks. There was, however, plenty of work to do during the summer vacation, which ended on October 1, for the furnaces had now to be repaired if not rebuilt.

The number of separate arti or guilds appears to have varied, and it was not till the fifteenth century perhaps that the divisions that were maintained until the last days of the republic were finally established. But at an early date the fialai and cristallai were separated from the specchiai or mirror-makers on the one hand, and on the other from the perlai—the bead-makers, more especially the makers of the ‘canes’ and pastes for beads; a fourth guild, too, was already established for the stazioneri, or retail vendors of glass. At a later date the perlai were separated into two guilds, of which one included the makers of conterie, the ordinary beads of commerce, while the other comprised, besides the makers of the canne for the large beads, those who prepared enamels in cakes for exportation. When we call to mind that, apart from these latter purely Muranese guilds, whose members were chiefly concerned with the preparation of the materials, the actual makers of the beads lived for the most part under separate organisation at Venice, it will be evident what an important part the bead industry has played in that city. The government probably encouraged the subdivision of labour, which made it more difficult for single workmen to establish glass-works in foreign countries.

In fact, the manufacture and export of beads have at all times formed the very backbone of the Venetian glass industry. We cannot trace this trade further back than the beginning of the fourteenth century—by means, that is, of definite documentary evidence—but by that time a fleet of galleys was yearly despatched, on the one hand to the Black Sea, on the other to Flanders and the Thames; subsidiary centres for distribution were established at the principal ports, and these beads already form an important element in the cargo.

Unlike the larger articles of blown glass, the strings of beads were in every way convenient articles of commerce, easily packed and easily valued and counted. So much was this the case that the name conterie^[134] (compare our word ‘counters’) was early adopted as a general term for the commoner kinds of beads.

Our English tongue is above all poor in words that can be used in the description of works of art. For apt expressions with which to indicate specialities of manufacture, varieties of shape or shades of colour, recourse must continually be had, however unwillingly on the part of the writer, to the French language. But in one case, at least, we have our revenge. We possess in the word ‘bead’^[135] a convenient term, of which the exact equivalent, strangely enough, exists in no other language. Nothing can be more inconvenient and more likely to lead to misconception than the use of the word ‘pearl,’ or ‘false pearl,’ in this general sense, and yet no term more definite has been found in either the French or the German language. In Italian the use of the term conterie is confined to certain classes of beads. The only fault, from our point of view, to be found with our English word is that it may be applied to objects made of other materials than glass. A term of very similar origin—‘paternosters’—was formerly employed for a certain class of large beads in France and Italy, but the use of it has never become general.

We have seen that towards the end of the thirteenth century the cristallai di cristallo di rocca fell foul of the glass-workers of Murano, and induced the authorities to forbid the imitation of their work in the inferior material. Not the least important of the productions of these workers in rock crystal and other hard stones were the beads for use in the rosaries (to use a word of later introduction)—the paternostri.

We know, too, that some such prohibition as that referred to was revoked in 1510; and the ground for this change of policy is found in the fact that for some time the Germans had been in the habit of carrying to their own country the ‘canes’^[136] of glass, which they there cut and polished to form paternostri. These beads, re-imported into Venice, found their way ultimately to all parts of the world.

The Venetians, we must remember, at an early date, long before they had acquired territory on the mainland, had established factories at Treviso, at Belluno, and along the upper course of the river Piave. It is probable that advantage was taken of the abundant water-power to establish in these towns mills for the grinding and cutting of their glass. This industry, forbidden for a time at Murano, may have been carried on in a more or less clandestine manner.^[137] It was through this country, too, that the German traders passed, and a link between the trans-Alpine and the Italian glass industries was thus early formed.

The starting-point in the manufacture of beads is a rod or cane of glass: according as this cane is hollow or solid, the manufacture is carried on by radically distinct methods.

In the case of the hollow cane or tube, we start from a ‘gathering’ at the end of the blowing-iron; this gathering is slightly inflated to form an incipient paraison, and a rod of iron is attached to the further extremity. This rod is seized by a boy—the tirador—who runs with it at full speed so as to elongate the glass as much as possible before it has time to cool; the thin tube, or canna, thus formed may, it is said, be as much as 150 feet in length. This tube, broken into rods of convenient lengths, then passes into the hands of another set of workmen, living for the most part in Venice. The rods are now carefully sorted, as to size, by women—the cernatrici—and handed over to the cutter, who, seated at a bench, cuts off equal lengths by passing the rod between a blade or chisel held in the hand, and a similar tool fixed in the bench, the size of the fragments being regulated by means of the scontro, a semi-cylindrical block of steel. If the object was to manufacture the little cylindrical bugles or jais, the bead—if so it may be called—is now completed. But in the case of a normal bead, the edges had now to be rounded. With this object the aperture of the little tubes had first to be filled with some infusible substance; this was done by rolling them in the hand with a finely ground mixture of lime and charcoal. They were now placed along with a quantity of sand in a tubular iron receptacle, which was rotated over the furnace.^[138] By this means the angular edges were rounded off. The beads were then sifted from the sand and shaken up in a bag to remove the material with which the tubes had been plugged; finally they were sorted into various sizes by means of a sieve, and, in the case of spherical beads, those of irregular shape were eliminated by rolling them on an inclined table. It only remained for the lustratori to give them a final polish by shaking them up in a sack with bran.

This was the process adopted for the smaller beads—the conterie—which, before packing, were threaded on a string by girls. The larger perle, such as the perle a rosette, or chevron beads, of which I shall speak presently, had to be ground into shape on the wheel. Any ornament or design that appears on these beads depended of course upon the constitution of the original canna. This was often built up of a succession of layers of various colours, obtained by dipping the first gathering into one or more pots of coloured glass, before drawing it out to form a tube.

Beads made by this process belong strictly to the class of blown glass. The other system which we will now describe takes us back to the old primitive methods of glass-working. In this case we start from a solid rod of glass, which is manipulated in the hand of the workman somewhat like a stick of sealing-wax. Seated at a table, he melts the extremity of the canna in the flame, directed away from him by means of a blow-pipe, and twists the thread of viscid glass around a small rod of iron.^[139] By this or similar methods, not only beads but various small objects of verroterie are formed. The surface of these may be subsequently decorated by means of appliquÉ studs and stringings of various coloured glass, or again, the half-fused substance may be pressed into little moulds. The spun-glass also, so much admired a few years since, is made from rods of glass melted in the flame of the table blow-pipe.

This is the process of the suppialume, in which the Venetian workmen acquired such skill in later days. It cannot be traced further back than the end of the fifteenth century, and its invention is associated with a certain Andrea Vidaore. The guild of the suppialumi was only finally constituted in 1648. If this process was really only introduced at so comparatively late a date, we have here a curious instance of a reversion to an old technique, for it is impossible to overlook the points of resemblance between it and the manner in which the ancient Egyptians built up their beads.^[140]

It must be noted that the practical difference between the beads made by the suppialumi and those formed from hollow tubes, is not one of size. Large or small beads may be formed by either process. It is, rather, that in the first case the ornament is superficial—it is something added to the surface of the bead. On the other hand, in beads made from hollow tubes, the design, though limited in variety, is carried through the whole bead. This is a distinction much appreciated by native connoisseurs in Central Africa and elsewhere.

Among the beads made from hollow tubes there is one type, generally of commanding size, which may perhaps claim some attention. I refer to the great Chevron Beads, the Perle a rosette of the Italians, À propos of the origin and date of which a not insignificant literature has accumulated. I treat of them here, as in by far the larger number of instances, if not in all cases, these beads can be undoubtedly recognised as of Venetian manufacture. These chevron beads have been made from canes built up of concentric layers of coloured glass. They have attracted exceptional attention from the fact that examples have been found in so many widely separated parts of the world, and from their possessing, in some cases, apparently well founded claims to great age. The arrangement and the succession of the colours in the glass is in every case practically identical. The canes from which they were formed have been built up of three main concentric layers, externally a deep cobalt blue, then an opaque brick red, and in the centre a tube of pale green transparent glass; these main layers are divided by thinner ones of opaque white glass, and the dividing surfaces have been worked into a series of chevrons or zig-zags (these chevrons are in all cases, I think, twelve in number) so as to present a star-like pattern on a cross section. The only variations on this general type are as follows: the chevrons are, in a few cases, dragged laterally so as to resemble the teeth of a circular saw; the central tube of transparent glass is sometimes divided by a zig-zag layer of opaque white; and, very rarely, the external layer is green instead of blue. In shape and size, however, these chevron beads show wide divergences: in length they may vary from two and a half inches to as little as a third of an inch, and the diameter, though generally less, is in a few cases greater, than the length. The extremities in some of the larger and presumably older specimens are facetted, that is to say, ground down to a pyramidal form. What, however, we may call the normal type, is of a cylindrical shape with rounded ends (Plate XV. 2).

These perle a rosette are at the present day made at Murano for the African market. When in the spring of 1903 I visited the glass-works of the ‘Venice and Murano Company,’ I was shown by Signor Andrea Rioda specimens both of these beads and of the canes from which they are prepared; the company was at that time executing a large order from a French firm, for the Congo. This work, however, is not generally undertaken by the firms that make the ordinary conterie, for these large beads have to be separately ground and polished on a wheel—an important point, as we shall see. They have been made at Murano, the local tradition affirms, from time without memory.

Quite recently, in the immediate neighbourhood of Treviso, a deposit of these chevron beads has been discovered in a bank beside an open field; ‘bushel loads’ of fragments were extracted, but not a single perfect bead. They were without exception broken fragments, not improbably ‘wasters,’ thrown aside possibly by those who were employed in grinding them. Treviso, I may note, is a town of mills and swift-flowing streams—in fact, the nearest point to Venice where abundant water-power could be found. Unfortunately no light so far has been thrown upon the age of this curious deposit.^[141]

In general aspect, in the scheme of colour especially, there is something unmistakably African about these chevron beads. To say nothing of their exceptional size, they have little in common with any other type of polychrome bead, whether Egyptian, classical, or from Teutonic graves.

I may at once say that I consider these perle a rosette as essentially of Venetian origin, and made, above all, for the African market. How the industry arose, and whether the Venetians in this instance as in other cases took the place of earlier Byzantine or Syrian glass-workers, there is nothing to show. We know that the Alexandrians of Greek and Roman times, like the Phoenicians before them, traded with the native races of Central Africa. These beads have certainly been found in Egypt,^[142] especially in Upper Egypt and Nubia; it is even said that some of the Soudanese tribes have succeeded in making passable imitations of them.

It must be remembered that the Venetians, at least in later times, did not trade directly with inland and barbarous races. Their business was to deliver their merchandise at certain seaport towns where they had factories or agencies. The goods then fell into the hands of local merchants who distributed them by caravans or sent them on coastways in their ships. So the Arab traders of Egypt, reshipping the Venetian wares at Suez or other ports of the Red Sea, would carry them in their dhows to Zanzibar or India; and so again in later days the merchants of Amsterdam and London, who held at times vast stores of Venetian beads, distributed them in Dutch or English ships to the very extremities of the world. The trade in beads was very active in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. At the present day, in the warehouses of Bevis Marks and Houndsditch, there is probably accumulated a larger stock of beads than in Venice itself.

So far we are on firm ground, nor is there anything surprising when we are told that the large chevron beads have been found in Central Africa,^[143] in the South Sea Islands, and even in Canada and the United States. But when we hear of examples being taken from Red Indian grave-mounds and even from ancient Peruvian tombs, we feel some need of hesitation before accepting the statement. So of the specimens found in England, many of them are water-worn and have an air of the remotest antiquity: they have been extracted from wells, from river-beds, and, it is stated, from Anglo-Saxon graves. I may mention that these chevron beads early attracted the attention of English antiquaries. Dr. Stukeley, who had several in his possession, brings them up in his disquisition on Druidical remains, and Bishop Gibson, as far back as the beginning of the eighteenth century, figures them in his edition of Camden’s Britannia. Gibson mentions that when he was opening a grave (presumably Anglo-Saxon) at Ash, a worthy friend by way of jest placed one of these glain nidr or ‘serpent’s eggs’ among the genuine ancient beads. I will not say with regard to this attempt at mystification—ex uno disce omnes; but the story suggests an attitude of caution in the case of other similar finds.

I cannot discuss this thorny question here, and must refer those interested in such subjects as the Glain Nidr or ‘Adder Beads of the Druids,’ or again, the Breton Ouef rouge du Serpent Marin, to the exhaustive paper by the late Mr. John Brent in the forty-fifth volume of ArchÆologia.