The history of glass in the nineteenth century is mainly concerned with improvements in mechanical processes, by means of which it is now possible to turn out a perfectly clear white glass in large quantities at greatly reduced cost.

Meantime little heed has been given to the artistic merit of individual pieces. In fact, thanks in no small measure to one widely applied mechanical ‘improvement,’ the process namely of pressing into a mould, the highly trained skill of the glass-blower has been less and less called into play, so that now a complaint is heard, both in England and in France, of the difficulty of finding workmen thoroughly masters of the art. The last stage, indeed, in the decline of our English cut-glass was reached when ‘passable imitations’ of the facetted work were turned out by this ‘pressing’ process.

And yet from time to time attempts have been made on the one hand to give fresh life to old methods of work and schemes of decoration, on the other to develop the application of the material along new or previously little explored paths. Of what has been effected in Venice in the first of these directions something has already been said. In England, and we may add in Germany also (at Berlin, for instance, and at Ehrenfeld, near Cologne), these attempts have for the most part taken the direction of revivals, as when by the skilful use of the blowing-iron table-glass has been produced of graceful but rather fantastic outlines and with more or less reminiscence of Venetian prototypes. I need not dwell upon such efforts, as nothing in the way of a school has been founded. It is indeed noticeable that both in Germany and in England, in the case of the more expensive table-glass that we now see in the shop windows, the decoration, such as it is, has continued to be sought rather in processes of cutting and engraving on the old lines.

Various fantastic methods of surface decoration have indeed found favour at times. An artificial iridescence has been given to the surface by certain chemical agencies—perhaps the most elaborate instance of such decoration may be found in the ‘favrile’ glass of Messrs. Tiffany, the well-known goldsmiths of New York. But as a rule, the facility with which the desired result may be obtained at little expense by means of modern chemical and mechanical processes has led, in the case of glass, to that want of reticence and restraint and to that habit of resting content with the À peu prÈs—the passable imitation—that are characteristic of so much of the modern art productions that fill the show-cases of exhibitions.

Somewhat greater interest may be found in certain applications of glass that have come to the front in France of recent years. Here at all events there is a public that takes some interest in the contemporary products of the decorative arts. In the yearly Salons, beside the pictures and the sculpture, these minor arts—jewellery, metal-work, fayence and glass—find a prominent place and a critical or enthusiastic public.

It is, however, only within the last few years that objects of glass have taken an important place among these exhibits, and that this is so is above all due to two men who, with considerable artistic talents, combine great energy and both scientific and technical knowledge—these are Émile GallÉ and Henri Cros.

Already many years ago the art of enamelling on glass had been successfully revived in France—witness the reproduction of a Saracenic mosque lamp made by M. P. Brocard as far back as 1867.^[284] But since that time glass, as a material capable of artistic applications, has been attacked upon new lines. When speaking of the glass of the Chinese, I have more than once pointed to the influence that the work of these people has apparently had upon certain new developments in France. Something of the sort—in the way, I mean, of treating glass as if it were a stone of varied colours, carnelian or onyx—was indeed attempted here in England as long ago as 1878, in the case of the cameo glass of Webb of Stourbridge. Contemporary with him, EugÈne Rousseau was working in France with his verres doublÉs et triplÉs.

But these strange new methods of treating glass are above all associated with Émile GallÉ, who at Nancy (where he was born in 1846) has built up something like a school. The material was attacked by him, as it were from every side. Advantage was taken of the facility with which, by means of powerful machinery, glass can now be rapidly cut into any desired shape. As in the case of the decoration of the modern porcelain of SÈvres and other places, a source of more than one heat-resisting colour has been found in chromium, and even such rare elements as thallium and iridium have been experimented with. By the skilful application of reducing and oxidising flames, local variations of colour are brought about, and (in this unconsciously following the Indian glass that I spoke of in the last chapter) the possibilities of artistic effect to be found in the presence of numberless minute bubbles have not been neglected. The Chinese have been surpassed in the strange pitted forms—in some cases recalling cork or other kinds of bark—that the surface of the glass has been made to assume. But above all, in the varied markings, in the mouchetage and the arborescent forms, that loom out from the interior of the glassy mass, M. GallÉ has outdistanced all his predecessors. Lately he has introduced pieces of metallic foil, or again crystalline masses of amianthus or mica, into the body of his glass; or again insects, realistically rendered in enamel—dragon-flies are a great favourite—are seen caught up within the mass.

Both GallÉ and others have made frequent use of an incrustation process by which fragments of glass are worked into the surface of a soft paste—but this was a means of decoration known in Egypt in the days of the Ptolemies. Endless gradations of colour are obtained by laying or ‘soldering on’ successive thin layers of glass until the desired effect is obtained. To some such process are also due, it would seem, the delicate shades seen in the Tiffany glass. Finally, by the use of rapidly revolving boring-tools—some of them worked on a vertical axis—the hardest Bohemian glass may be quickly brought to the desired form.

Apart from the yearly exhibitions, examples of the glass of the Nancy school may be seen in Paris at the Luxembourg and at the École des Arts et MÉtiers. It cannot, however, be said that the general effect of this glass is, as a rule, either brilliant or decorative.

M. GallÉ himself is something of a poet—of the symboliste school, I should judge. What it is that he aims at expressing by means of this often sombre glass cannot indeed be better presented than in his own words:—‘Mist and dews half shroud and half reveal the fine veinings and splashings in a grey jade-crystal vase. A thick flushing of rose-tinted glass is carved into a chimera-like flower, half influorescent, half smiling, half weary, half orchid, half pansy. A beetle drags its slow length over the rust of the lichens. Side by side with flesh-tints and carnations we see bold touches of coral pink. A pale gleam steals through the dull maze of iridium. Vegetable shadows grin at us. Phantoms of bloom are dimly seen. A fossil shell engraved beneath the fragile work contains the glass-worker’s signature.’—(Quoted by H. Frantz, Magazine of Art, vol. xx. p. 269.)

Of quite another nature is the pÂte de verre, a substance somewhat of the nature of a glass frit, which has 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. At the entrance of the new hall of Sculpture at the Luxembourg may be seen a relief of this pÂte de verre forming the back of a fountain. As a material it lies perhaps a little remote from the class of objects with which we have been occupied in this book. I mention it here as an example of the success which in France of late years has attended the attempt to take advantage of the new appliances and materials that, thanks to recent scientific discoveries, lie at the command of the artist and craftsman. Here, as in the case of the potter’s art, not only have old-world processes—those of the Far East above all—been revived, but a constant endeavour is being made to strike out in new directions.