The alumina here is probably not to be regarded as a base, but rather as taking the place of the silica. Hence the exceptionally low percentage of the latter.

It had its origin in great measure in the arbitrary regulations laid down by the fiscal authorities at the beginning of the last century. This side of the subject is well treated in the article on glass in the original edition of the Penny CyclopÆdia.

In the Museum at Kew may be seen specimens of Spanish barilla made from the Halogeton sativa, as well as large crude cakes of roquetta from Aden and Bagdad prepared from the SuÆda fruticosa and the Salsola kali respectively.

‘The Processes of Decay in Glass’ is the subject of an elaborate paper by Mr. James Fowler, to be found in the forty-sixth volume of ArchÆologia.

Good instances of both these changes may be observed in the windows and chandeliers of the Galerie des Glaces at Versailles.

I know at least of no example of a vessel or bead of glass of an earlier date. That the molten material of the glazes—known from the earliest period—may even in very early times have been rolled into slabs and subsequently cut up into pieces for inlay-work, would seem to be proved by a fragment of a wooden box, bearing the name of a king of the First Dynasty, found by M. AmÉlineau on the site of Abydos. This box (it is now in the Ashmolean Museum, where it was pointed out to me by Mr. Bell) is decorated with small triangular plaques of what is apparently a blue translucent glass, with an uneven but undecomposed surface.

It should be borne in mind that colourless rock crystal was at all times ‘taboo’ to the Egyptians, and this fact may partly account for the absence of clear white glass in Egypt.

In most cases, I think, the comparatively hard arragonite, the carbonate, and not the sulphate of lime that we know by that name.

There is, however, some reason to believe not only that the salt lakes of the Delta were exploited at a very early date, but that the natron, an impure carbonate of soda, may well have been exported thence by an old caravan route, perhaps even in pre-dynastic times.

Professor Buckman, in a paper in the ArchÆological Journal so long ago as 1851 gives some valuable analyses of ancient glass, the main result of which is to show the absence of lead and the general use of copper as a source of blue, in pre-Roman times at least. In many of these older analyses, as in those made by Sir Humphry Davy, there always remains an element of doubt, not so much as to the accuracy of the chemist’s work, but as to the provenance of the specimen that he is examining. Professor Buckman dwells upon the light that properly conducted analyses would throw upon the origin and classification of the glass of the ancients. He does not, unfortunately, distinguish the nature of the alkali, whether soda or potash, in his own analyses. Little work of this kind has been accomplished in the fifty years that have since elapsed.

Antimony has been found in the glaze of Assyrian bricks, as well as in the yellow enamel of mediÆval Saracenic glass. The Egyptian name was mestem, whence the word stibium (antimony), but other minerals such as galena, hÆmatite, and pyrolusite (oxide of manganese), have also been found in their kohl-pots; at one time indeed, during the early empire, a copper-green was in fashion for painting the angles of the eyes. I may mention that in the twisted rods—of a comparatively late date, however—that fitted into these kohl-pots, we have some of the earliest examples of a transparent white glass.

This, however, is not quite certain, for the prÆnomen of Thothmes III.—Men-cheper-Ra—was assumed, I am informed, by one of the priest kings of the Twenty-second Dynasty. Indeed, the technique in this case would point rather to a late than an early period.

I had proposed to include this example and the two little vases previously described among my coloured illustrations. I have, however, not been able to obtain the requisite permission from the keeper of the Egyptian Department.

This is the expression used in the official catalogue of the Museum, from which I borrow this description.

Glass-workers’ moulds have been found at MycenÆ, and it has been claimed for this glass that it was made as well as melted on the spot. But that, I think, is unlikely.

All this bears out what I have said above upon the relation of the earliest glass to the metallurgy of copper, and the probability that the earliest glass was a blue glass (p. 26).

It is a remarkable fact that somewhat similar beads, of clear, colourless, facetted glass, evidently of great age, have lately been brought from West Africa. (See a paper by Mr. C. H. Read in Man, May 1905.)

Such a comparison may indeed be made in the case of the bulk of the ‘primitive’ glass of which we treat in this chapter, and may help to accentuate the difference between it and the blown glass of later days.

Some fragments of a conical vessel of clear thin glass, evidently formed by the blowing-tube, have lately been found by M. de Morgan at Susa. They are said to bear a cuneiform inscription of the time of the AchÆmenidÆ. These fragments are now in the Louvre, but considerable doubt exists as to the nature of the markings. The glass certainly resembles suspiciously that used by the Arabs for their small hanging lamps.

See Chapter XXI. for some further account of this glass.

On the other hand, in the First Epistle to the Corinthians and in the Epistle of James, there are references to mirrors that may have been of glass. Again, in Revelation we find ‘a sea of glass like unto crystal’ (iv. 6), and what is more important, glass in other passages (xxi. 18 and 21) is referred to as ‘pure’ and ‘transparent’ (the words in the original being ?a???, ?a?a???, and d?afa???). In view of the question, discussed below, of the date when clear glass came into general use, this contrast between the Gospels and the, on the whole, later books is of some interest.

This arrangement in spiral coils is very characteristic of the glass of this period, though it is generally only to be seen on close examination. We have noticed it in the case of the ‘lace-glass’ from Canosa. It may give us some clue as to the method of manufacture.

This collection, which contains many fine examples of ancient glass, has been bought en bloc by Mr. Pierpont Morgan, and is likely to follow the still more famous Charvet collection (so carefully described in M. Froehner’s great work), and to find its way to America.

The basis of this collection was formed by Mr. Nesbitt many years ago; it was presented to the Museum, in 1887, by his brother-in-law, the late Sir A. W. Franks. Mr. Nesbitt was the compiler of the catalogues both of the Slade collection (privately printed, 1871) and of the glass at South Kensington (1878)—magnificently illustrated works, but now in a measure out of date.

The evidence, however, on this point is very conflicting.

The pale rosy tint seen in a few rare specimens of classical glass, as in some pieces lately brought from Egypt, I should rather attribute to a skilful use of manganese.

The presence of tin in this glass which I have already mentioned in speaking of its Egyptian prototype (p. 27), has been confirmed by analyses made at SÈvres by M. SalvÉtat. I do not know whether the researches of this chemist into the composition of the glass of the ancients have ever been published.

In the Roman floor mosaics the tesserÆ are almost invariably of stone, but occasionally fragments of glass are found, as in the famous ‘Mosaic of the Philosophers’ in the museum at Cologne. Here the ground is built up of a smeltz-like greenish glass.

We may compare this use of glass with the kyanos studs of the MycenÆan period, or again with the blue glass inlaid between the volutes of the capitals in the temple of Minerva Polias at Athens, described long ago by Hamilton.

In the glass coffin from the Temple collection in the British Museum we have an example of the use of such glass on a comparatively large scale.

Mr. Kennard has a plaque of clear white glass, some six inches in length, with the bust of a faun in high relief. This plaque is pierced on either side, as if for fixing upon some object of furniture.

We may regard the little ovoid vase in the British Museum, made by blowing a thin vesicle of deep blue glass into a casing of silver, pierced by oval apertures, as an example of moulded glass where the mould has not been removed. If the silver casing were stripped off, we should have a good imitation of ‘prunted’ glass; not that this is to be taken as a model of the way in which these prunts were made (see below, p. 110).

How far the so-called diatretum work is based upon such appliquÉ or added portions of glass is a much disputed point. Mr. Nesbitt appears to have regarded all such work as so formed (Catalogue, Slade Collection, pp. xiv.-xv.), and the imitations now made at Murano are certainly built up in this way; not so, however, some of the genuine ancient pieces, I think. (See below, p. 71.)

The Egyptians, too, as we have seen, sometimes decorated their glass with similar splashes, but we never find that these are distorted.

There are many allusions to the painting of glass, in some cases merely by varnishes, in the early mediÆval treatises on glass (see Chap. VII.). Some of these recipes, as we shall see, may have been handed down from classical times.

The contents have been described by the late Canonico Passini, in a magnificent work published by Ongania of Venice, in which nearly every piece of importance is reproduced in colour or by photography.

There is among the Roman glass in the museum at Cologne a shallow bowl about a foot in diameter, painted on the back, as in the later verre ÉglomisÉ, with a female head. The colours—black, red, and white—are but slightly burnt in, and therefore much decomposed.

This part is stated to be a distinct piece cemented on to the bottom of the vessel. So at least says Mr. Apsley Pellatt in his Curiosities of Glass-making, writing, I think, before the vase was broken.

In the same book will be found a careful account of the process of ‘casing’ as now practised. It was probably by some such plan, in the case of the Portland vase, that the paraison of blue glass was blown into the previously prepared vessel of opaque white.

I shall return to this sculptured work when treating of Byzantine glass in the next chapter.

By the courtesy of Lord Rothschild I have had an opportunity of examining this wonderful cup. It is undoubtedly carved from one piece of glass. The spirited execution would seem to point to a date hardly much later than the beginning of the third century. The internal depressions were made perhaps with the object of lighting up the external figures. The glass by transmitted light is of a fiery red, tending to purple, but the figure of Lycurgus is exceptionally of a fine amethystine tint. I think that in both cases the colour is probably due to a skilful use of manganese.

The abrading material employed along with the wheel was probably in most cases corundum or emery (the adamas of the ancients) in a powdered form; not the diamond, which was excessively rare, nor the emerald, as is sometimes stated. This last stone is not only much rarer than corundum, but it is also not so hard.

Compare what is said below on p. 82 of Greek-speaking Syrian artisans.

For some account of what these writers tell us about glass, see below, Chap. VII.

Theophilus, however, writing a century earlier than the pseudo-Heraclius, appears to speak of the marver as a slab of stone (see below, Chap. VII.).

The sand of this river as a material for the manufacture of glass is already mentioned by Theophrastus, a pupil of Aristotle.

Glebas nitri. This is doubtless the natron (impure carbonate of soda) exported from the Egyptian natron lakes, which have been worked from a very early period—a substance that must not be confused with our nitre (nitrate of potash); as I have said, the glass of the ancients is essentially a soda glass. The natron was probably first exported for the use of the soap-makers.

This again must not be confused with the white earth, which we now know under that name, a substance unknown to the ancients.

By this is probably meant three parts in twelve or ten, i.e. 25 or 30 per cent. of the whole.

Great care must be exercised in translating the names of the precious stones and marbles mentioned by Greek and Roman writers. These names are used in the vaguest way, which hardly ever corresponds to the modern meaning.

Among others, from the early history of the Christian Church in these parts.

At Rome, too, there is some reason to think that the working of glass—the minor departments of that art, at least—was long in the hands of Syrian or other Semitic immigrants. Martial’s itinerant hawker from the Transtevere, who bartered his sulphur matches for broken glass, we may perhaps think of as a Jew (Book 1., Epigram. 42).

See p. 88.

Compare with these the bottle from Cologne in the British Museum containing a hardened mass of some yellow substance, and closed by a decayed cork partly covered by a corroded bronze capsule (Slade Catalogue, No. 275).

Both these forms are found in Anglo-Saxon and Frankish graves. It will be remembered that in France there was no sudden break in the Roman culture on the appearance of the Germanic invaders, as was the case in England.

Philostratus describes the process by which the ‘barbarians of the ocean’ spread colours upon heated bronze so as to form a hard enduring decoration. He was of the household of Julia Domna, and M. Froehner suggests that he may have heard of these enamels from one of the officers of the army of Septimius Severus.

The famous enamelled bowl, however, found in a Roman tomb of the time of Hadrian, at Bartlow, Essex, was accompanied by a cinerary vase and other examples of glass. See ArchÆologia, vol. xxvi.

The chapter dealing with these marks, together with that on the geographical distribution, forms the most valuable part of M. Froehner’s already quoted work on ancient glass.

So when some of our leading archÆologists saw at first in the discoveries of Schliemann at MycenÆ and Troy the work of wandering tribes of the fifth and sixth centuries, they were unconsciously arguing in favour of this often renewed Oriental influence.

The glass from the catacombs has long attracted notice, with the result that many more or less clever forgeries, dating from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, have to be reckoned with. These fondi d’oro are most completely illustrated by Garucci in the third volume of the Jesuit father’s great work, the Storia dell’ Arte Christiana (1876), as well as in an earlier work (1858 and 1864), especially devoted to Christian glass. The most scholarly treatment of the subject is to be found in the little work of Dr. Hermann Vopel, Die Alt-Christlichen GoldglÄser (1899). For an excellent summary of what is known on the subject, see also the catalogue of the early Christian Antiquities in the British Museum, by Mr. O. M. Dalton, and the same writer’s paper in the ArchÆological Journal (1901).

These lines, which describe the critical process by which the superficial layer of glass was applied, are unfortunately somewhat obscure. If I have translated them aright, the process did not differ much from that now adopted at Murano. Heraclius is here probably copying an older recipe.

There is a good example, a bearded man, in the Glass Room at the British Museum. Some clever imitations were made in the eighteenth century.

As examples of this, note the gladiator glass and the Anatoli Gaudens portrait from the Tyskiewitz collection. This last example, of quite exceptional merit, has been recently acquired by the British Museum.

I am inclined to connect the cemetery glass as a whole with the Judaising Christians of the old narrow school, who had long been settled in Rome near to the Porta Capena and in the Transteverine quarters, not far, that is to say, from the principal cemeteries.

Formerly in the Basilewski collection, now, I think, in the Hermitage, St. Petersburg. This cup, which is also of interest for the inscriptions on it in a local dialect of debased Latin, was found near the site of Doclea, to the north of the Lake of Scutari.

In the Theodosian code, however, we find, among the craftsmen who are freed from personal taxes, Vitrearii, vasa vitrea conflantes.

A disc of this description, pierced to receive glass cups, is apparently an earlier form than the well-known corona, the polycandela, so long in use in Christian churches. The hanging disc, like so many things Roman and Byzantine, would seem to have survived among the Saracens; something like it may still be found in old Arab houses in Cairo. Elsewhere Paul, speaking of the single lights in St. Sophia, describes them as silver vessels, like a balance-pan—in the centre of each rests a cup of ‘well burning oil.’ This passage, I think, throws some light on certain ‘balance-pan’ dishes of rock crystal and glass, preserved in St. Mark’s treasury at Venice (see below, p. 101).

Its relation to the Queen of Sheba we may dismiss. The other two uses that have been assigned to this bowl may be reconciled, if we accept one of the earliest forms of the tradition of the Holy Graal. (I follow here the account given by the late Mr. Thomas Arnold in an article by him in the EncyclopÆdia Britannica.) According to this tradition, Joseph of Arimathea, at the time of the Crucifixion, proceeded first to the upper room where the Last Supper had been celebrated and found there the shallow bowl that had held the Paschal Lamb. Taking this vessel with him, and returning to the scene of the Crucifixion, he received in it drops of blood from the side of our Lord. The double service of the bowl is the essence of this tradition. Mr. Arnold, À propos of the traditionary connection of the Holy Graal with Glastonbury, quotes from Malmesbury a statement that in his day an altar called ‘sapphirus,’ which had been brought from Palestine to St. Davids, had been re-discovered. This may well have been a slab of glass similar to that still preserved at Reichenau. I have been unable to find any further reference to this ‘sapphirus’ altar.

Il Tesoro di San Marco illustrato da Antonio Passini, Canonico della Marciana. Published by Ferd. Ongania, Venice, 1886. As in both the text and the plates of this work the glass is mixed up with objects of rock crystal and other materials, I give a reference to the plates on which vessels of glass are reproduced.

This dish should probably rather find a place among the hanging lamps of the next section. There are others of these so-called chalices and patens of which the original use is very problematical.

This vase has been classed by Von Czihak with the so-called Hedwig glasses (see below, p. 115); the resemblance, however, to the German glasses is small.

Note in this connection the inscription on the mounting of the lamp of carved glass (IV. 1 in our list) in St. Mark’s treasury, referring to a bishop of Iberia, the modern Georgia. Not until the reign of Justinian was the Roman empire extended to the east coast of the Euxine—to Lazica and Colchis.

The contents of these graves have been described in a paper read before the Society of Antiquaries by Mr. C. H. Read (ArchÆologia, vol. lv.).

I use the term Saxon here to include also the Angles and Jutes.

In this widely spread class of jewellery, both true enamel and glass are conspicuous by their general absence.

I have seen, in the collection of Mr. Kennard, the lower part of a vase of thickish clear green glass, from an Anglo-Saxon tomb. On this the tails of the well-formed prunts sweep downwards diagonally; on the head of each is a rosette Such a form one may perhaps connect with the ‘hroden ealo woege,’ the ‘twisted ale-cups’ of Beowulf’s poem (cf. Hartshorne, p. 24).

Note in this tapestry, in more than one feast scene, the swaggering action with which the guests raise the drinking-horns, either to drink from the larger end or to let the liquid pass into the mouth from the pointed extremity.

In the sacristy of the church at Mittelzell, where I recently had an opportunity of examining it. This is an irregular oblong slab, about twenty inches in length, weighing about thirty pounds. One surface is nearly even, as if the molten glass had been poured out upon a table.

The Slavonic tribes before their conversion do not appear to have had any knowledge of glass; it is not found in any of their tombs to the east of the Elbe.

Apart from a few examples of enamelled glass of Saracenic origin preserved in church treasuries; these probably came in somewhat later.

There are, beside these, five other glasses that may be connected with this saint, but these are of a different character. Hedwig was the wife of a Silesian prince who lived in the early part of the thirteenth century. On the occasion of a misunderstanding with her husband, arising from the lady’s refusal to drink anything but water at her meals, the difficulty was surmounted by a miracle. St. Hedwig was canonised in 1257, and was soon recognised as the landes patronin both of Silesia and Poland.

For example, on Gallic and British coins derived from Greek types, or again on some English porcelain where an Oriental design has been unintelligently copied.

Les Origines de l’Alchimie, 1885; La Chimie des Anciens et du Moyen Age, 1889; La Chimie au Moyen Age, 1893.

This I shall refer to later on as the pseudo-Heraclius; it contains several sections treating on the manufacture of glass, and forms a valuable commentary on the decidedly earlier treatise of Theophilus.

Compare with this account the furnace now used in Northern India described in Chapter XXI.

At South Kensington, in the Indian section, may be seen some native distilling apparatus of glass, which follows very closely in the line of these old Syrian drawings.

For the relation of Theophilus to his predecessor, Bishop Meinhart of Paderborn, and to the Greek influence still prevailing in Germany, see the Introduction by Albert Ilg to his edition of this treatise in the Quellenschriften fÜr Kunstgeschichte, vol. vii.; Vienna, 1874.

Much of this latter sort, however, was to be greedily absorbed in Germany at a later date.

Are we to take this acquaintance with the Agia Sophia in a material as well as a symbolical sense? Does Theophilus in this passage claim to have visited Constantinople?

Not long after this a German poet writes to this effect—

This is, of course, the ‘marver,’ not yet of iron as in the thirteenth-century writer (cf. p. 76).

From the expression used, ‘quam fistulam,’ etc., it would seem that the identical hollow tube was used again and not replaced by a simple rod—the pontil; but perhaps this is merely a slip on the part of Theophilus.

The literal statement is that ‘the painted gold figures are covered with the clear fusible glass of which we have already spoken’; over this again the coloured designs are painted—a curious and elaborate process. We must, however, remember that although Theophilus may have seen specimens of Byzantine enamelled glass, he can have had little opportunity of learning how they were made.

There annuli probably included also bracelets or bangles of glass. We may perhaps compare them to those still worn by Arab women. Margaret, Countess of Flanders, had in 1252 a casket full of glass rings.

Yet in France much of the old glass was sacrificed at the Revolution in order to extract the gold. See Appert, Les Vitraux Anciens, for the composition and colour of mediÆval window-glass.

Early in the eleventh century, a saintly German bishop, Bernard of Hildesheim, is said to have made for himself a chalice of glass, and a few years later a bishop of Auxerre founded three prebendal seats, one for a painter, one for a goldsmith, and a third for a glass-worker (vitrier—probably a maker of glass windows). We must not, then, be surprised at the acquaintance with the practical arts shown by the monk Rugerus (Theophilus).

M. Schuermans, however, brings forward passages to show that in early days the term was applied to a small flask carried about the person.

What little we have comes mostly from the Venetian archives. We hear already in the fourteenth century of German hawkers of glass, and of the skill of the Germans in making glass mirrors.

To hollow ware, that is to say. Stained glass for windows, of which examples still survive, was made in England in the fifteenth century, and probably even earlier.

Compare with these the four hundred and thirty-two urinalia supplied to the Dauphin of the Viennois for a year’s consumption. Glass, it would appear from an epigram of Martial, was put to a similar use by the Romans.

The village of Kirdford is situated about four miles to the north of Petworth.

It stood for long against the wall of the South Ambulatory. As in this position the paintings appeared to be suffering from the damp, it has lately been removed to the Jerusalem Chamber.

A fifteenth-century plaque at South Kensington is possibly an exception. Here the gold leaf lies between two sheets of glass, the lower one of considerable thickness, but how these sheets are united I cannot say.

In shape they resemble the little bottles in which attar of roses is still sold in Oriental bazaars, and this resemblance may give a hint as to their original use.

Schefer, Relation des voyages de Nassiri Khosrau(1035-1042 A.D.), pp. 42 and 46. The information from Arab writers collected in the notes to this work must not be confused with what Khosrau himself says. There is, however, one important reference to our material in the text:—we are told that glass, transparent and pure as the emerald, was sold in Cairo by the weight. This was in Fatimi times. There may, perhaps, have been some confusion with the glass weights themselves, of which we have spoken above.

We may find, perhaps, what is the last reference to Alexandria in connection with glass in ‘the most precious vase, Alexandrini generis,’ that the Emperor Henry II. (d. 1024 A.D.) presented to the Abbot of Cluny. This was probably an example of sculptured glass, which may have come to Henry through his relationship with the Byzantine emperors.

Gustav Schmoranz, Old Oriental Gilt and Enamelled Glass Vessels, 1899. One hundred and forty glass lamps are accounted for, of which number exactly half are now in the Museum of Arab Art at Cairo. The remaining pieces—goblets, bottles, etc.—only amount to forty-four, but these are nearly all in European museums or private collections.

There was only one, for instance, in the Slade collection. There are now seven in the British Museum and nine at South Kensington, without counting the smaller specimens.

For the important bearing of this point, see my book on Porcelain in this series.

Note that the use of cobalt as an overglaze enamel on Chinese porcelain did not come in until the seventeenth century, and that this enamel at first gave more trouble than any other.

I use this term for the writing with tall perpendicular strokes, although much of it, I understand, should not strictly bear the name.

A good example may be seen in a large picture of the Circumcision by Marco Marziale in the National Gallery.

Glass lamp-cups of this form are still made in India; Mr. Forrest, ex-Director of Records at the India Office, has shown me a specimen brought from Gujerat. Glass lamps of a similar construction seem to have been in use in bedrooms in Germany in the fifteenth century; they may be seen in contemporary pictures.

The magnificent specimen of enamelled glass with geometrical decoration, which belonged to the late Baron Alphonse de Rothschild, figured in Schmoranz’s work as a lantern, is, of course, a stand for a candle. It resembles in every respect, except material, the well-known cylindrical candle-stands of inlaid bronze.

A good example of the first is reproduced by M. Gerspach (L’Art de la Verrerie, p. 100) from a manuscript of the famous story-teller Hariri. For an instance of the second, see the side subjects on the WÜrzburg flask in the British Museum.

The construction, indeed, closely resembles that of the Cairo cup-lamp described above.

The oldest of these ballads only dates back to the time of the Duke of Wharton, at the beginning of the eighteenth century. The ‘wicked Duke,’ it is said, when in his cups would toss the ‘Luck’ into the air and catch it in his hand.

This is the goblet figured in Schmoranz, p. 29. It belonged at the time, he tells us, to an unknown collector, who gave £1600 for it at Christie’s in 1881.

Illustrated in ArchÆologia, vol. lviii., where it forms the starting-point of the paper by Mr. C. H. Read, that I have quoted from above.

In this respect differing from the other cup in this collection to which the same date and origin are ascribed. I refer to the Aldrevandini goblet, with the armorial shields, described in the next chapter. The glass of this cup is already quite of a Venetian type, approaching to a true cristallo.

He reigned during the temporary deposition of Malek Nasir.

This lamp also has, I think, passed into the Pierpont Morgan collection.

The badge of a sword is very frequent upon these later lamps, but it can hardly in all cases refer to the same sultan or emir.

The only other lamp, as far as I know, that has been obtained from Syria, is one from Damascus, presented to the British Museum by the late Sir A. W. Franks. This in no way differs from the ordinary type except in the enamelled decoration at the base of the handles. A lamp of quite normal description at South Kensington has also been attributed, but very doubtfully, to the same Syrian town.

The words on the document as I read them are ‘parte schietti et parte À rediselli.’ The ambassador at the same time sends an order for window-glass to be used in the new palace that Ali Pasha is building; and finally, for ‘uno di quelli ferali [fenali?] over fano di salla grande'—probably some kind of chandelier.

We should have looked rather for some trace of Oriental influence. Freeman (Historical Geography, p. 240) speaks of the marquisate as ‘a feudal state, whose rulers had in various ways a singular connection with the East. As Marquesses of Montferrat they claimed the crown of Jerusalem and had worn the crown of Thessalonica.’ Again, early in the fourteenth century the marquisate passed to a branch of the imperial house of PalÆologus.

The Consolato dell’ Arte was yearly elected on Christmas Day amid great festivities. In the statutes of the Arte Vitrea, drawn up or revised in 1495, we have apparently the earliest documentary evidence for these glass-works. These statutes are given in full in Bordoni’s L’Arte Vetraria in Altare, Savona, 1884.

The results are perhaps best summed up in the memoir contributed in 1872 by Cecchetti to the Reale Instituto Veneto. See also the Monographia della Vetraria Veneziana, the combined work of Zanetti, Cecchetti, and others, drawn up upon the occasion of the Viennese Exhibition of 1873. Vicenzo Zanetti, in his account of the Museo Civico at Murano, gives a list of more than three hundred works (including manuscripts, drawings, and pamphlets) treating upon Venetian glass.

A possible exception has been found in a document of the year 1090, in which a certain citizen adds the word fiolarius to his name. This word, which in the Venetian tongue generally takes the form friolaro, is of some importance to us. In Dante the word fiala is used for a wine-bottle: ‘il vin della sua fiala,’ Par. x. 88.

As early as 1175 it is mentioned that the Venetians had certain privileges in the Daciones de Vitro at Tyre.

Ayas, Tripoli, Tyre, and Acre remained under Frankish rule during the greater part of the thirteenth century. Acre, the last to fall, was taken by the Saracens in 1291.

My point is that in this beautiful cup the scheme of decoration is essentially French, while the technique of both glass and enamels points to a Saracenic place of origin.

They have been analysed by Cecchetti in the paper quoted above.

This word was the source of much embarrassment to Merret, the translator of Neri’s little manual on glass, of which I shall have more to say further on. Quite regardless of the context, he throughout his translation rendered the words ‘canne di conterie’—that is to say, the glass rods from which the beads were made—as ‘rails for counting houses’!

The term ‘bead’ was early transferred from the ‘bid’ or prayer to the small spherical bodies strung on a cord by which these prayers were counted, and before the end of the fourteenth century the word was already used in a secular sense also.

These canne are described as ‘de vero [vetro] commun, Christallini et colorade de diversi sorti.’

Note in this connection the recent discovery of ‘chevron’ beads at Treviso, referred to below.

Something like the apparatus used for roasting coffee, it would seem. I do not attempt to give any explanation of the two rival processes—a spiedo (on a broach or spit) and a ferracia. That attempted by Mr. Nesbitt (South Kensington Glass, p. civ.) is not satisfactory.

It is not, I think, generally known that beads were made in the east of London, early in the last century, by this process—by dropping off the glass upon a revolving spit or rod of iron (Hartshorne, p. 106).

According to Dr. Petrie’s interpretation (see above, Chapter II.). It is difficult to understand how the elaborate beads found in Etruscan and Greek tombs—those with satyr masks especially—were built up without the use of the blow-pipe.

Now preserved in the local museum at Treviso, where I lately had an opportunity of examining them. Nothing was found with them except a few small rods of coloured glass. It has been suggested that this was a contraband store, at some time destroyed by fire; but the fragments are in no case fused together. This parti-coloured glass, we may note, would be of little value for ‘cullet,’ and defective beads would therefore be thrown away.

A fine specimen has found its way into the collection of Egyptian antiquities in the British Museum.

The term ‘Aggri’ should, perhaps, be reserved for large beads, of which the colours extend right through the mass, but the term is not very definitely used in the African trade.

Some of this enamelled glass no doubt dates from the early years of the next century. On the other hand, some of the thin white glass of capricious forms described in the next chapter may have been made before the year 1500. Apart from the generally vague ground of shape and style of decoration, there is no means of fixing the date of Venetian glass, so that in the absence of costumed figures or of coats of arms we are often very much in the dark on this point.

I have seen, however, in a fourteenth-century manuscript, glasses with well developed stems carefully depicted.

It was on the strength of the armour borne by this figure that M. Labarte attributed this cup to the early part of the fifteenth century. I may note that this goblet, as well as the one of green glass mentioned below, was bought in Italy for a small sum by M. Debruge DumÉnil, one of the earliest systematic collectors of Venetian glass. The elaborate catalogue of his collection, made very shortly after his death in 1847, by his son-in-law Jules Labarte, is a valuable record of the Italian art of the Renaissance.

James Howell, EpistolÆ Ho-elianÆ.

This vessel appears to be sometimes filled, not with water, but with moist sand or earth.

In the Louvre, the nymph of Giorgione’s ‘FÊte ChampÊtre’ holds a jug of glass of graceful form over the well to the left, and in Titian’s ‘Supper at Emmaus’ in the same gallery, the twisting lines that surround a decanter with tall neck and handles, suggest a decoration with latticinio.

The quotation is from the Appendix to Vicenzo Cervio’s Il Trinciante, Venice, 1593.

‘Ma quando particolarmente se voglion’ far vetri bianchi di smalto vi s’aggiunge calcina di stagno e questo si chiama latticinio del quale si fanno opere diverse sopra i vasi di christallo’ (Garzoni, Piazza Universale, 1585, p. 550).

But in the earlier writers this name is given rather to the imitations of agate—what was afterwards known as schmelz (cf. p. 218).

A similar effect is obtained nowadays by means of a salt of uranium, but as is so often the case in the modern handling of old decorative systems, the opalescence is generally overdone.

Laborde, Les Émaux au Louvre, Part II. No. 498, and the same author’s Les Ducs de Bourgogne (Archives of Lille).

In the museum at Murano is, or was, a similar plaque thus described by Zanetti, ‘Una grossa piastra col busto incavato del Doge Andrea Gritti fra le initiali A. G.; secolo XVI.’ (Il Museo Civico-Vetrario di Murano, 1881).

By the eighteenth century, however, they had adopted the German system. The President De Brosses, in one of the admirable letters that he wrote from Italy (1739), when describing the manufacture of mirrors at Murano, gives a vivid account of the cylinder process.

Not really steel, of course, but a kind of speculum metal containing about one part of tin to two of copper. Fioravanti, in his Specchio di Scientia Universale, tells us that this acciaio was made of equal parts of brass and tin. He contrasts the German and Italian methods of preparation of glass mirrors, giving the preference to the former. Fioravanti then speaks of the interest taken in these mirrors—not by women only—and after balancing the pros and cons, he concludes that, on the whole—‘gli specchi son’ mala cosa nelle case.’

A word that must not be confused with the term luse or lustro, applied by the Venetians to a mirror.

There is a magnificent chandelier of this class in the drawing-room of Mr. Beaumont’s house in Piccadilly. It dates probably from the early years of the eighteenth century.

‘Notizia delle opere d’arte.’ I quote at second-hand, as I have not been able to find a copy of this work.

The learned Cardanus, physician, mathematician, and astrologer, has a section on glass both in his De Subtilitate (1551) and in the somewhat later De Varietate Rerum. He is often quoted as an authority on the subject by contemporary and later writers, but in spite of many quaint and ingenious reflections I can find little of practical value in his remarks.

Not to be confounded, says the writer, with the stone known as Magnese, found ‘nella Magna’ (Allemania or Germany). ‘Quite other are the virtues of this stone [magnetic oxide of iron?] when placed under your pillow, ...’ but for the context I must refer the reader to the sixty-ninth section of the original work.

In the fourth section of the second treatise the author speaks of ‘azurro della Magna del quale si tinge il vetro.’ There is also a section at the end of the first book on the preparation of azurro fine from pietro d’azurro ultramarino, but I do not think that this has anything to do with the colouring of glass, as it is associated with recipes for dyeing grey hair of a blonde colour and for preparing the acqua virgine by which the face is rendered beautiful. It is difficult to understand what relation the Acqua di Philoseophy (sic—there are several sections so headed at the end of the treatise) has with the preparation of glass. But all these old formulists are only too ready to run off at a tangent to discuss questions of alchemy.

In spite of what Milanesi says in his introduction, I strongly suspect this third treatise to be of a later date than the others; the whole tone of it seems to smack more of the cinquecento than of the previous century. At the same time it is inferior to the two preceding treatises in practical knowledge—indeed it contains much nonsense.

See above, p. 174, for an account of L’Altare.