The manufacture of glass is of great antiquity. The invention has been ascribed to the Phoenicians, but specimens of glass beads, amulets, plaques, vases, and small phials or bottles have been found in some of the oldest Egyptian tombs. In the British Museum there is a small piece of blue opaque glass in the form of a lion’s head, which bears the prenomen of the Egyptian monarch Nuntef IV., belonging to the Fourth Dynasty (B.C. 2423-2380). There are also paintings on the walls of early tombs representing bottles with red wine, as well as figures engaged in glass-blowing.

A number of glass bowls, vases, and bottles from Nimroud may be seen in the British Museum, the earliest specimen of which is an Assyrian transparent glass vase with two handles, and is inscribed with the name of the monarch Sargon (B.C. 722-705). This is supposed to be the oldest known specimen of transparent glass (Fig. 294).

Many long-shaped little bottles—alabastron—of pale greenish, and others of brilliant colours, with slightly varied shapes, have been dug up from the ruins of Assyrian palaces, and have been found in most of the ancient tombs in Greece, Italy, and in the islands of Cyprus, Sardinia, and Rhodes. These little bottles have been made by the Egyptians, Assyrians, Phoenicians, and Greeks, and their shape, being consecrated by use, remained unchanged for many centuries; they were portable objects of barter, as glass beads also were with the Phoenicians, who distributed them in trade to all parts of the countries bordering on the Mediterranean (Figs. 295, 296).

Common forms of the Phoenician glass bottles were small vessels in the shapes of heads, and of dates, grapes, and other fruits, which were blown in moulds. These vessels probably came from the great workshops of Tyre and Sidon; some of them bear the names of their makers—Eugenes, Ennion, and “Artas the Sidonian.”

The shapes of many of these vessels are decidedly Greek, and if not Greek in manufacture, have been copied from the shapes of Greek pottery.

The colours used were yellow, turquoise, and white on blue, green, or brown, and a common arrangement of these was in zigzag or wavy alternating lines; in other examples the surface was reeded, as may be seen in the alabastron, Fig. 295.

Ancient Roman glass is of great variety in colour, and many specimens show the highest technical skill combined with great artistic beauty. The lovely iridescent effect on Roman and other antique glass is due to the chemical changes of the surface decomposition, and in other instances to the minute flaking of the glass, which reflects the light at various angles, and thus producing the prismatic hues.

At the time of the Roman occupation of Egypt, during the period of rule under the Ptolemies, glass making was a great industry in the latter country. It is said that the Romans learnt the art from the Egyptians, and it is known that many of the latter were brought to Rome to practise their art as glass-blowers.

The making of the glass known as mille-fiori was taught to the Romans by the Egyptians, and was extensively employed in vase and bottle making by the former; the Venetians from the fourteenth century have imitated the Romans in their uses of mille-fiori glass for bead making and other purposes, with great success.

The method of making this variety of glass consists in arranging a number of thin rods or threads of glass of the required variety of colours, gold being sometimes used; these united rods were then fused together by heat, and drawn out or twisted, so that when transverse sections were cut the pattern would always be the same.

Another way of mixing the colour in glass, which was employed by the Egyptians, Romans, and later by the Venetians, was in the making of regular patterns of mosaic-like designs of the various colours, and another was in imitating the precious stones and marbles, such as onyx, agate, serpentine, porphyry, and murrhine; the latter is supposed to be a variety of agate, with red and purple shades. The murrhine glass examples of Roman manufacture are very rare.

The Romans used these glass imitations of the precious stones and marbles to line their walls and floors, as in mosaic work.

Egyptian and Roman glass in their transparent varieties have such colours as yellow, purple, blue, green, and pink; opaque colours are generally found in shades of yellow, blue, green, and black. The most valuable kind of glass was that of the clearest white or crystal; this, it would appear, was the most difficult to make, as the commoner clear variety had usually a slight greenish or bluish hue.

The Romans made a special variety of glass ware which consisted of interlaced bands of opaque white or coloured glass, ingeniously made to form a pattern by twisting them with clear or coloured transparent glass, like that of the elegant lace-glass variety known as the “vitro di trina” of the Venetians (Fig. 302).

In the arts of glass cameo and intaglio engraving, and in the imitation of gems, the Romans were exceedingly skilful.

The cameo engraved glass was produced by placing a layer of white opaque glass on a ground of transparent blue, the design being formed by cutting away the white surface to the blue ground, leaving the blue as the background; the remaining white which formed the design was then carefully finished by engraving. Light and shade was produced according to the thicknesses of the cameo left by the engraver.

The celebrated Barberini or Portland Vase, in the British Museum, is made in a blue and white cameo. This splendid work of art was discovered in a marble sarcophagus near Rome, which is supposed to have been the tomb of the Emperor Alexander Severus. The vase is ten inches in height, is two-handled, and has for the subject of one side a figure decoration representing Thetis consenting to be the bride of Peleus, attended by Poseidon and Eros; on the other side is Peleus and Thetis on Mount Pelion, and on the bottom is a bust of Paris. The ground is transparent blue glass, and the subjects are beautifully engraved in cameo out of the superimposed white layer.

A similar kind of vase, but smaller, was found at Pompeii, and is now in the Museum at Naples, and the remains of the Auldjo Vase in the British Museum is also in a similar style, the cameo decoration of it consisting of vine-leaves.

Intaglios and cameos, sometimes of a large size, were copied in glass from gems; these were usually cast in moulds, and many of them are of high value as works of art. (Fig. 298).

The Romans made window glass of small squares or oblongs, which was manufactured by rolling it on a plate.

In the early Christian period gold leaf was used as a means of decoration on glass: sometimes the gold was annealed to the surface, and sometimes it was placed, as the making of the gold smalto for mosaics, between two layers of thin glass, and afterwards fired. Patterns and figure subjects were executed in gold foil, and formed the decoration of glass dishes and bowls, the broken remains of which have been found in the Christian tombs of the Roman Catacombs.

Though extensive glass works are known to have existed at Constantinople and at Thessalonica between the ninth and thirteenth centuries, there are scarcely any remains of Byzantine glass in existence that can with certainty be ascribed to the Eastern empire, unless we except the five cups and two shallow basins of thick green glass that are decorated with Byzantine ornament, and which form part of the treasure of St. Mark’s at Venice. Glass was used in the windows of Byzantine churches and, of course, in the making of the mosaic tesserÆ.

It is highly probable that glass objects were made in Syria, and at Damascus especially, since the Roman period, yet examples of the earlier work from these parts are very rare. The celebrated gold cup of Chrosroes (A.D. 531-579) is a Persian work which has been set with glass lozenges and rosettes. Other examples are small glass weights, discs, or tokens, and a Saracenic glass basin in the Cluny Museum at Paris, which has been made either in Egypt or Syria, and is known to date between 1279 and 1294.

With the above exceptions there is no authentic work that can be pointed to which dates earlier than the fourteenth century. The finest examples of Saracenic glass, some of which may be seen in our museums, are the beautiful enamelled glass mosque lamps (Fig. 299). They mostly date from the fourteenth century, and are usually decorated richly with Arabic inscriptions—sometimes with the name of the artist—in gold and coloured enamels.

In the city of Damascus glass cups and other vessels of great beauty were made at this period, having enamelled Saracenic decorations.

The “cups of Damascus” were much prized, and according to the inventories of the kings of England, France, and Germany, we learn that they were set in gold stands or mounts, and were usually presents to Western monarchs, brought by their ambassadors from the East.

The cup kept by the Musgrave family, and known as the “Luck of Edenhall,” is made in enamelled Saracenic glass, and has a leather covering of fifteenth-century workmanship.

Venetian blown glass has always been renowned for its beauty, both in its elegance of form-as in the wine-glasses, goblets, and cups—and in the beautiful opalescent hues of its delicate colouring.

The making of glass in Venice began to assume great importance in the fourteenth century, but many small glass furnaces were in operation for more than a hundred years prior to this date.

The Venetians apparently, in the early period of the Renaissance, studied very closely the remains of the Roman glass, and eventually imitated and produced nearly all the kinds of glass that in former days were made in ancient Rome.

Another direct cause which led to the advancement of the glass makers’ craft in Venice was the parricidal conquest of Constantinople by the Christians of Rome, aided by the fleets of Venice, in 1204, for after the sacking of the Byzantine capital, most of the portable works of art of every kind-including the bronze horses that had been brought from Rome to Constantinople by its founder, and which now adorn the front of St. Mark’s-were carried off to Venice, and it is more than likely that after this the glass mosaic workers, among other Byzantine craftsmen, had come to Venice, where they found employment in the rising republic.

The work in the mosaic decoration of St. Mark’s doubtless helped to develop the making of glass in Venice, and the lagunes were rich in marsh-loving plants that would yield alkali and furnish the fine sand requisite for its manufacture.

Mention is made in one of the documents in the archives of Venice, dated 1090, of one Petrus Flavianus, who was a “phiolarius,” or glass maker, and the trade regulations of the glass makers’ societies or corporations are preserved at Venice and Murano, which show that in the thirteenth century they had become important bodies.

Glass furnaces were becoming so numerous in Venice that the Great Council decreed, in 1291, they should be demolished, but permitted them to be set up outside the city, in the suburban districts. In the following year, however, the decrees were altered to the effect that the small glass workers might remain in the Rialto (the city proper), provided fifteen paces were left between each atelier. These decrees were made to guard against a possible spread of fire.

It is supposed that this had the effect of moving many of the principal glass works to Murano, a district of Venice which had become renowned for the production of Venetian glass, and where to-day the eminent firm of Salviati & Co. have their extensive works.

The glass house at Murano, which was known as the “Sign of the Angel” in the early half of the fifteenth century, was the most renowned of the ateliers of that century. Angelo Beroviero was one of its earliest directors, who was succeeded by his son Marino in that position. The latter was a head or master of the Company of “Phioleri” (Glass Makers’ Corporation) in 1468, which was a very strong society at that time and enjoyed exceptional privileges from the city council.

The intercourse of Venice with the East furnished the Venetian glass makers with patterns of Damascus and Egyptian glass, and the enamelled and gilded Oriental varieties were imitated and improved on by the Murano artists. Some of the products of this period are preserved in the museums. The illustration (Fig. 300) is from a Venetian enamelled cup of green glass in the Kensington Museum.

In the sixteenth century the glass-making furnaces of Murano had increased to a great extent, and were placed under the special protection of the Council of Ten. Owing to the jealousy at this time of other European States, Venetian glass-blowers were bribed by offers of money and large salaries to set up furnaces abroad, and laws were then made forbidding workmen to leave the country to carry on glass making in other places under the penalty of death. This, however, did not prevent Venetian glass-blowers from taking service under the protection of foreign rulers in such countries as Flanders, Spain, and England.

The natural consequences followed, that the exports in glass from Venice to foreign countries became lessened, so much so that the workmen of Murano complained of being thrown idle for several months in the year.

Venetian glass has been made in many colours, such as blue, green, purple, amber, and ruby, and in variegated mixtures of clear or transparent and opaque glass. The clear variety is remarkable for elegance of shape and fantastic designs of handles or wings, consisting of twisted and knotted interlacings, which were generally executed in blue or red colours and attached to the sides of wine-glasses and other vessels (Fig. 301). One beautiful variety of glass is clouded with a milky-like opalescent tint, which is supposed to be produced from arsenic. The opaque white glass is made by the addition of oxide of tin to the usual ingredients.

Glass was made by the Venetians to imitate precious stones, were streaked, splashed, or spotted with various colours, gold, and copper; the aventurine spotted glass was obtained from a silicate of copper.

The latticinio variety was formed of rods of transparent glass enclosing lines of opaque white glass forming patterns. The vitro di trina is the so-called lace-glass (Fig. 302); the latter and the mosaic-like or mille-fiori glass were made by the Venetians in imitation of the Roman varieties. Another variety was that known as a reticelli, in which ornament of opaque network sometimes enclosed air bubbles. That known under the German name of Schmelz is the variegated or marble opaque glass made in the Murano furnaces, which imitated chalcedony, lapis lazuli, tortoiseshell, and jasper. Crackled glass was made by the sudden cooling of the half-blown material; this was again heated and drawn out in order to increase the spaces between the crackled lines.

In the sixteenth century the forms of the Venetian glass vessels were of the Renaissance type; the long shanks and the wide bowls gave them an appearance of elegance and grace. The light and thin character of the material had also a great deal to do with the fragile look of elegance in Venetian glass of this period; the glass of the former (fifteenth) century was of a much thicker kind.

The lightness and superior strength of Venetian glass was due to the absence of lead in its composition, which is so much used in the modern flint glass.

The materials of the composition of the clear Murano glass are supposed to be—one part of alkali, obtained from ferns, moss, lichen, or seaweed, and two parts of pebbles of white quartz or fine clean white sand, and a small quantity of manganese, all well mixed together and melted in the furnace.

The colouring matter is produced from the oxides of various metals, as in the vitreous coloured glazes used in the enamels for glazed pottery.

Vessels and objects in endless variety have been made by the Venetians, such as ewers, basins, drinking-glasses, bottles, standing cups, bowls, goblets, large and small candlesticks, beads, and mirrors, and were exported in great quantities to all parts by the Venetian galleys.

Bead making at Venice was a separate trade, and was one of great importance in the sixteenth and two following centuries. The makers of the small beads were called the “Margariteri,” and those who made the large beads were known as the “Perlai.” The beads were made from small sections broken or cut off from rods or tubes of glass and placed in an iron pot that was made to rotate, so that the motion prevented the beads from adhering to each other, and at the same time formulated their spherical shape.

Mirrors were made by the ancients of polished metal and from slabs of black obsidian—a kind of natural glass. In mediÆval times they were made of clear glass behind which was placed a sheet of lead foil. Glass mirrors were made in Venice from the year 1507, when methods had been discovered of polishing the glass and of applying the “foglia,” or layer of metal leaf, to the back. After this date the making of mirrors soon developed into great importance, and the “Specchiai,” or mirror makers, had their own corporation. Like the other glass wares of Venetian manufacture, the mirrors were exported to all parts of Europe.

Some good examples of sixteenth-century mirrors and mirror-frames in glass cut into ornamental shapes, with bevelled edges and engraved, are preserved in our museums and in old houses.

Glass painting for windows was known and practised in Venice as early as the fourteenth century. The very early Italian stained glass used in windows is said to have been executed for Leo III. in 795.

Besides the painted or stained glass used in church windows during the Middle Ages throughout Italy, there were glass manufactories in Rome, Verona, Milan, and Florence for the production of similar wares as those of Venice.

In France and Spain glass making was carried on at various places from the days of the Romans; antique fragments of glass have been dug up in Normandy and in Poitou. In the latter province glass making flourished from a very early date up to the fifteenth century. It was revived in 1572 by the Venetian Fabriano Salviati, who came to Poitou and set up a glass workshop. At Paris, Rouen, Normandy, and in Lorraine glass was made prior to the sixteenth century. The Normandy glass was of a coarse kind, made chiefly for windows and common utensils, but many of the Venetian varieties were made at the other places named.

Some Venetian glass makers came to Paris in 1665, when an establishment was formed for the making of mirrors, and about the same time another factory was set up at Four-la-Ville; these two factories were united by the French Minister Colbert, and were under the patronage of the king. We find that soon afterwards, and especially in the Louis-Quinze period, large panels and wall spaces were filled with glass mirrors as interior decorations.

Glass was made in Spain in the Ibero-Roman period, as the remains of glass vessels and necklaces have been found in tombs, and the ruins of Roman furnaces have been found in the valleys of the Pyrenees. It is supposed that the art was carried on under the Gothic kings of Spain, and also by the Moors in the thirteenth century, who brought with them glass workers as well as some of the wares of the East. Much of the glass made in Spain subsequent to this date is in imitation of the shapes of Arabian pottery, and this is still the case in much of the modern Spanish glass. Spanish glass of the Renaissance was similar in form and in material to the Venetian work of the same period, and during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the work was in imitation more or less of the contemporary Dutch and Flemish glass (Fig. 303).

In Holland, glassware seems to have been made by Murano artificers, who from time to time settled in that country and brought the secrets of their trade with them. The objects made were naturally imitations of the Venetian glass, and many of the Dutch drinking-glasses were very graceful in design.

In Amsterdam, Antwerp, Brussels, and throughout the Low Countries generally Venetian glass had been imported in great quantities in the time of and prior to the seventeenth century, and it is difficult to say how much of the old glass found at those places is Dutch, Flemish, or Venetian.

Engraving on glass was much practised in Holland, and many Dutch goblets have well executed portraits of kings, queens, and other persons.

Glass making has been practised in Germany, like in most European countries, from the days of the Romans downwards, especially in the Rhenish Provinces, but German examples dating from the Middle Ages are very rare.

There is documentary evidence which proves that glass was made at Mainz as early as the beginning of the eighth century.

The earliest example of German glass in this country is a wiederkom, or cylindrical drinking-vessel, which bears the date of 1571, but an older one, of the date of 1553, is preserved in the KÜnstkammer at Berlin.

A favourite decoration on the German Wiederkoms is the arms of the emperor or electors, those of the different states of the empire, and of private owners (Fig. 304).

The colour of this kind of glass is usually green and the decorations are enamelled or painted in grisaille; as a rule the German cups and wine glasses of the seventeenth century are richly decorated (Fig. 305). In the German wine-glasses known as “flÜgelglÄserflÜgelglÄser” is seen an imitation of the Venetian “winged glasses” (Fig. 301).

Bohemian glass of the seventeenth century is noted for its clearness and good quality, and illustrates the advancement made in the art of engraving on glass. The engraved work was done with a diamond point as in etching, with the lapidary’s wheel, and by means of biting the glass with fluoric acid; the latter method is said to have been discovered by Henry Schwanhard of NÜremberg in 1670. John SchÄper was a very clever glass engraver and decorator of this period.

A beautiful kind of German glass is known as Kunckel’s ruby glass, the originator of which was the director of the Potsdam glass works, where he produced this variety about 1680.

Many relics of glass vessels and beads have been found in Roman tombs, and in various parts of England, of a greenish or blue colour. These may have been imported or may have been made in England, but there is no certain evidence of this. Glass vessels for drinking purposes have been found which are believed to have belonged to the Anglo-Saxon period (Fig. 306).

The material of these is thin, the colour is generally of a pale straw tint, and strips of thickened glass ornament the outside, arranged in the nature of parallel lines, or wound spirally to produce a kind of network decoration.

Venetian glass found its way to England in the sixteenth century; in the inventories of Henry VIII. (1529) and of Robert, Earl of Leicester (1588), large quantities of Venetian glasses are mentioned as belonging to the above.

Some Muranese glass workers were engaged at this time (1550) in the service of the King of England. The name of an Italian—Jacob Vessaline—is mentioned as a glass maker who worked at Crutched Friars in the beginning of Elizabeth’s reign (1557), and in the year 1589 there were supposed to be fifteen glass houses in England.

Sir Robert Mansel was a prominent glass maker of the seventeenth century; he obtained patents in the year 1616 for the making of window glass and all kinds of vessels, and from the remains of glass objects that were found on the site of Princes Hall, in Broad Street, London, it is believed that his works were on that spot.

Mansel employed Italian workmen in the first instance, and it appears that prior to 1623 he had set up works in Milford Haven, at Newcastle-on-Tyne, in Scotland, and other places. The Newcastle furnaces were the most successful, the others being practically failures. Mr. Nesbitt thinks that the success of the Newcastle-on-Tyne works was due to the new system of flint-glass making, which must be credited as an English invention.

Flint or crystal glass is made of a mixture of silicate of potash and lead. It was known but imperfectly made by the Romans in their clear glass variety, which contained a small portion of lead. In the Middle Ages the glass which contained lead was called “Jewish glass,” and was generally used for painting on, as it was more fusible than other varieties which did not contain lead. But all authorities agree that the English invented a new product in their flint glass, which was made after many experiments at Lambeth in 1673, as “clear, ponderous, and thick as crystal.”

Mr. Nesbitt infers that it was the use of coal in the furnaces instead of wood that led to the development of the process. When using coal the melting-pots had to be covered in the furnace, which lessened the heating powers and thus made the fusing more difficult. To put more alkali in the mixture would have helped it to fuse at a much lower heat, but it would have injured the colour and quality of the glass, so lead was added in certain proportions, which gave the requisite clearness and strength.

All kinds of glass vessels and plate glass for carriage windows were made at Lambeth, under the management or patronage of the Duke of Buckingham.

Though there are no records of glass making in Ireland of a very early date, the glass beads and glass bosses which decorate the objects of Irish art, such as the crosses, croziers, brooches, book-covers, and the celebrated Ardagh Chalice, prove that the art was known in Ireland at least in the ninth century, if not earlier. Mention has also been made in old writings of this period of glass vessels for use in Irish churches.

Painted or stained window glass is the glory of our MediÆval churches. The earliest coloured windows were doubtless made from mosaic-like arrangements of different bits of coloured glass. The mosaic window led to the representation of pictorial subjects in stained glass, the latter being formed of pieces of self-coloured glass, or that kind having each piece stained in one colour throughout, cut in the requisite shapes, and fastened together by an arrangement of lead lines which form the main lines of the design; to help out the drawing and expression the stained glass is shaded in hatchings, stippling, and bold lines, usually in a brown colour. Painted glass, as distinguished from stained glass, is that which is painted on clear or tinted grounds with various enamel colours made from metallic oxides. After the painting is finished the piece of glass is fired, and the enamel colours become fused with the glass surface, and really become part of the glass itself. More finish, a wider range of colouring, greater detail, and generally a more pictorial effect is produced by the artist being able to use freely the enamel colours; but a corresponding loss of depth and brilliancy of colour and of bold decorative effect which belonged to older examples of stained glass must be set against any advantages the painted variety may possess from its pictorial point of view.

The earliest instance in the use of stained glass for church window’s is supposed to have been in those that were given by Count Arnold to the Abbey of Tegernsee in Bavaria in the year 999. The thirteenth and fourteenth century were the finest periods for the stained-glass windows of the Gothic cathedrals both in England and on the Continent. About the middle of the sixteenth century enamel colours began to be used, and, as before observed, the designs showed a striving after pictorial effects.

The revival of classic art in the Renaissance period has also a great deal to do with this change in the style and method of execution in painted glass, and we find that the greatest painters—but not always the greatest decorators-of the period supplied cartoons and designs for this class of work.

Glass making has been known in China and Japan from very early times, but it appears to be difficult to obtain anything like authentic information as to its history from our present imperfect knowledge or acquaintance with the native records.

There are stories of ancient Chinese glass vessels that are said to have been seen by the French missionaries of the last century, one of which vessels was so large that “a mule could have been put into it,” and that the Chinese made a kind of glass called “lieou-li” that was sufficiently elastic as to bend easily.

The vitreous enamels of the Chinese were of course used as glazes on their porcelain wares and pottery, but it seems that formerly they only made glass objects in the imitation of precious stones, gems, and in their enamels. Chinese glass is often made to simulate rock crystal and jade carvings; their glass snuff-boxes and other small objects are usually well coloured, and are decorated with relief work of ornament, landscapes or figure subjects, the objects generally being of a massive character (Fig. 309).