Transcriber's Notes

In two instances, the letter N has been printed with a macron above it. This has been represented as [=N].

Some presumed printer's errors have been corrected. These are listed in a second [transcriber's note] at the end of the text.

THE CONNOISSEUR’S LIBRARY

GENERAL EDITOR: CYRIL DAVENPORT

GLASS

[PLATE I]

ENAMELLED GOBLET
VENETIAN OR FRANCO-SYRIAN. CIRCA 1300, A.D.

GLASS

BY

EDWARD DILLON, M.A.

The Connoisseur’s Library

NEW YORK: G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS

LONDON: METHUEN AND CO.

1907

PREFACE

It is now nearly thirty years since the late Mr. Nesbitt wrote the introduction to the catalogue of the glass at South Kensington. Some years previously the description of the glass in the Slade collection had been intrusted to the same gentleman. Since that time many works treating of special departments of the history of glass have been published in France, in Germany, and in Italy. Much fresh light has been thrown upon the primitive glass of the Egyptians; our knowledge of the glass of both the Near and the Far East has been revolutionised; abundant fresh material has been provided for the history of Byzantine glass, and the wanderings of the glass-workers from L’Altare and Murano have been traced in full detail. Mr. Hartshorne, in his Old English Glasses, has exhaustively told the story of our native glass from the documentary side, and has described with the minutest detail the wine-glasses of the eighteenth century. Apart, however, from the introductory chapters of the last work, I know of no attempt of recent years to give a general account of the history of glass—using that term in the narrower sense—as viewed from the artistic side.

We have at hand in the British Museum a collection of glass that has no rival elsewhere; only second to it is the collection at South Kensington. It is in these collections that the history of glass must be studied. I have from time to time in the following pages called attention to the most remarkable examples. I hope that what I have said may assist the student in threading his way through what is a rather complicated history.

My best thanks are due to Mr. C. H. Read, who has charge of the glass in the British Museum, for the facilities that he has afforded me in the photographing of the examples in his department; not less to Mr. A. B. Skinner, director of the Victoria and Albert Museum, for similar facilities at South Kensington.

I am indebted to Professor Church for much valuable information and for some hitherto unpublished analyses of glass; to Lord Rothschild and to Mr. Vincent Robinson, C.I.E., for photographs of examples of glass in their collections; finally, to Signor Ongania, of Venice, for permission to reproduce from Passini’s great work on the Treasury of St. Mark’s some photographs of the glass there preserved.

E. D.

CONTENTS

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY OF WORKS ON GLASS

Agricola (Georg): De Re Metallica (last chapter of work). Basle, 1556.

Appert (L.) et Henrivaux: Verre et Verrerie. Paris, 1894.

Appert (L.): Notes sur les verres des Vitraux Anciens. Paris, 1896.

Bapst (A.): Chinesische Glasarbeiten; Zeitschrift für Bildende Kunst, 1885.

Bate (Percy): English Table-Glass. No date. (1904?)

Biringuccio (V.): De la Pirotechnia. Venice, 1540.

Blancourt (Haudicquer de): L’Art de la Verrerie. Paris, 1697.

Bontemps (G.):—

Guide du Verrier. Paris, 1868.

Exposé des moyens employés pour la fabrication des Verres Filigranés. 1845.

Bordoni: L’Arte Vetraria in Altare. Savona, 1884.

Bosc d’Antic (P.): Mémoires sur l’Art de la Verrerie. Paris, 1780.

Boutellier (L’Abbé): Histoire des Gentilshommes Verriers de Nevers.

Brent (John): ‘On Chevron Beads.’ Archæologia, vol. xlv.

Brinckmann (Justus): Various Catalogues, etc., of the Hamburg Museum.

Bucher (B.): Die Glassammlung des K.K. Oesterreich. Museum. Vienna, 1888.

Bushell (S. W.):—

Oriental Ceramic Art. New York, 1899.

Chinese Art, vol. ii. (South Kensington Art Handbooks). 1906.

Busselin (D.): Les Célèbres Verreries de Venise. Venice, 1846.

Cecchetti:—

Delle Origini dell’ Arte Vetraria Muranese. R. Institute Veneto, 1872.

Monographie dell’ Arte Vetraria. Venice, 1874.

Czihak (E. von): Schlesische Gläser. Breslau, 1891.

Dalton (O. M.):—

Catalogue of Early Christian Antiquities in the British Museum—Cemetery Glasses. 1901.

‘Gilded Glass of Catacombs.’ Archæological Journal, 1901.

Deville (A.): Histoire de l’Art de la Verrerie dans l’Antiquité. Paris, 1873.

Dobbs (H. C.): ‘Glass-blowers of North-west Provinces.’ Journal of Indian Art, vol. vii.

Eraclius: see Heraclius.

Fillon (B.): L’Art de Terre chez les Poitevins. Niort, 1864.

Fioravanti (L.): Dello Specchio di Scienza Universale, Bk. vii. cap. 29. Venice, 1567.

Fourcaud (L. de): Émile Gallé. Paris, 1903.

Fowler (J.): ‘On the Process of Decay in Glass.’ Archæologia, vol. xlvi.

Franks (Sir A. W.):—

Guide to Glass Room in British Museum, 1888.

Art Treasures of United Kingdom. Vitreous Art. 1858.

Friedrich (C.): Die Altdeutschen Gläser. Nürnberg, 1884.

Froehner (W.): La Verrerie Antique. Collection Charvet, 1879.

Garnier (E.):—

Histoire de la Verrerie et de l’Émaillerie. Tours, 1886.

Spitzer Catalogue, vol. iii. ‘La Verrerie.’

Garrucci (P. R.):—

Storia dell’ Arte Christiana, vol. iii. 1876.

Vetri ornati di Figure in Oro. 1858 and 1864.

Garzoni (T.): Piazza Universale di tutte le professioni del Mondo. Discorso lxiv. Venice, 1585.

Gerspach: L’Art de la Verrerie. Paris, 1885.

Griffith (F.): Egypt Exploration Fund. Tanis, Part ii. 1888.

Hallen (Rev. A.): ‘Glass-making in Sussex, etc.’ Scottish Antiquary, 1893.

Hartshorne (Albert): Old English Glasses. 1897.

Havard (H.): Les Arts de l’Ameublement. La Verrerie. Paris, 1894.

Heraclius or Eraclius: De Artibus et Coloribus Romanorum. Eitelberger von Edelberg: Quellenschriften für Kunstgeschichte, vol. iv.

Hirth (F.): Chinesische Studien; Zur Geschichte des Glases in China. Leipsic, 1890. And other papers.

D’Holbach (Baron)?: Art de la Verrerie, de Neri, Merret et Kunckel. Paris, 1752.

D’Hondt (P.): L’Art de la Verrerie. Liége, 1891.

Houdoy (J.): Verrerie à la façon de Venise. Paris, 1873.

Kunckel (J.): Ars Vitraria Experimentalis. 1679.

Labarte (J.):—

La Collection Debruge Duménil. Paris, 1847.

Histoire des Arts Industriels, vol. iv. Paris, 1866.

Lacroix (P.): Les Arts au Moyen Âge et à l’Époque de la Renaissance. Paris, 1869.

Lane-Poole (S.):—

The Art of the Saracens in Egypt. London, 1886.

Arabic Glass Weights in British Museum. 1891.

Layard (Sir A. H.): Nineveh and its Remains. 1853.

Lazari (V.): Notizia delle Opere d’Arte della Raccolta Correr. Venice, 1859.

Lobmeyr (L.): Die Glas-industrie. Stuttgart, 1874.

Loysel (C.): Essai sur la Verrerie. Paris, 1800. (Written earlier.)

Mathesius: Sarepta oder Bergpostil (Sermon xv.). Nürnberg, 1562.

Merret (C.): The Art of Glass of Neri translated into English. London, 1662.

Milanesi (G.): Tre Trattatelli dell’ Arte del Vetro per Mosaici. (Fifteenth century MSS.) 1864.

Minutoli (H. de): Ueber der Anfertigung der farbigen Gläser bei den Römern. Berlin, 1836.

Molinier (E.): La Peinture sous Verre. Spitzer Catalogue, vol. iii.

Naples: Description of Museo Borbonico. Glass, vols. v., xi., and xv.

Neri (A.): L’Arte Vetraria. 1612.

Nesbitt (A.):—

Catalogue of Slade Collection of Glass. Privately printed, 1871.

Catalogue of Glass Vessels in South Kensington Museum, 1878.

Glass (South Kensington Art Handbooks), 1875.

‘Opus Sectile in Glass.’ Archæologia, vol. xlv.

Encyclopædia Britannica, article ‘Glass.’ 1879.

Owen (H.): Ceramic Art in Bristol (chapter on Bristol Glass). 1873.

Passini (A.): Il Tesoro di San Marco. Venice, 1886.

Peligot (M. E.): La Verre, Histoire et Fabrication. 1876.

Pellat (Apsley):—

Curiosities of Glass-making. London, 1849.

Memoir on the Origin, etc., of Glass-making. London, 1821.

Pelletier: Les Verriers du Lyonnais. 1887.

Petrie (Flinders):—

Burlington Fine Arts Club; Introduction to Catalogue of Egyptian Exhibition, 1895.

Tell-el-Amarna. Egypt Exploration Fund. 1894.

Pinchart (A.): Les Fabriques des Verres de Venise, d’Anvers et de Bruxelles au XVI^e. et au XVII^e. siècles. Bulletins des Commissions Royales. Bruxelles, 1882.

Plinius Secundus (Caius): Historia Naturalis, Bk. xxxvi. caps. 44-47.

Porter (G. R.): ‘Glass and Porcelain.’ Lardner’s Cabinet Encyclopædia. London, 1832.

Powell (H. J.):—

Principles of Glass-making. London, 1883.

Encyclopædia Britannica, article ‘Glass.’ 1902.

Read (C. H.):—

‘Glass in South Saxon Graves.’ Archæologia, vol. lv.

‘On a Saracenic Goblet of Enamelled Glass.’ Archæologia, vol. lviii.

Riaño (J. F.): Industrial Arts in Spain, Part ii. (South Kensington Handbooks). 1879.

Santi (M.): Origini dell’ Arte Vetraria in Venezia e Murano.

Sauzay (A.):—

La Verrerie depuis les Temps les plus reculés. Paris, 1868.

Sauzay (A.):—

Marvels of Glass-making. (Translation of above.) London, 1870.

Schebek (E.): Böhmens Glasindustrie und Glashandel. Prague, 1878.

Schmoranz (G.): Old Oriental Gilt and Enamelled Vessels. German and English Editions. Vienna and London, 1899.

Schuermans (H.): The Wanderings of the Muranese and Altarist Glass-workers. Eleven Letters. Bulletins des Commissions Royales. Bruxelles, 1883-1891.

Spitzer Catalogue. See Garnier and Molinier.

Theophilus: Diversarum Artium Schedula. Eitelberger von Edelberg. Quellenschriften für Kunstgeschichte, vol. viii. Vienna, 1874.

Ure (A.): Dictionary of Arts, article ‘Glass.’ 1853.

Vopel (H.): Die Altchristlichen Goldgläser. Freiberg, 1899.

Zanetti (V.):—

Monographia della Vetraria Veneziana. Venice, 1873.

Museo Civico di Murano; Guida di Murano. Venice, 1866.

KEY TO THE PRECEDING LIST

Egyptian, etc. Griffith, Layard, Petrie.

Greco-Roman and Roman. Deville, Froehner, Fowler, Minutoli, Naples Museum, Nesbitt, Pliny.

Early Christian, Byzantine, Anglo-Saxon, etc. Brent, Dalton, Garrucci, Heraclius, Passini, Read, Theophilus, Vopel.

Saracenic and Perso-Indian. Lane-Poole, Dobbs, Read, Schmoranz.

Venetian (Murano and Altare). Biringuccio, Bontemps, Bordoni, Busselin, Cecchetti, Fioravanti, Garzoni, Houdoy, Labarte, Lazari, Neri, Pinchart, Santi, Schuermans, Zanetti.

French and Spanish. Boutellier, Fillon, Fourcaud, Gamier, Gerspach, Pelletier, Riaño.

German. Agricola, Brinckmann, Von Czihak, Friedrich, Kunckel, Lobmeyr, Mathesius, Schebek.

English. Bate, Hallen, Hartshorne, Merret, Owen, Pellat.

Chinese. Bapst, Bushell, Hirth.

Technical. Appert, Blancourt, Bontemps, Bosc d’Antic, D’Holbach, Kunckel, Lobmeyr, Loysel, Merret, Neri, Peligot, Pellat, Porter, Powell, Ure.

General and historical. Brinckmann, Franks, Garnier, Gerspach, Havard, Labarte, Lacroix, Nesbitt, Sauzay.

GLASS

CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTION

Glass is a substance in so many ways connected with the conveniences and amenities of our daily life, and the word calls up so many varied associations, that I must here at the very beginning make clear with what a comparatively small proportion of the manifold applications of the substance I have to deal.

In the first place, this is an art history, so that with methods of manufacture and practical uses we are only concerned so far as they may influence or help to explain points of artistic interest. Again, even on the artistic side, it is not with every branch of the varied applications of glass that we shall be occupied in this work. By an anomaly of the English language, whose vocabulary for matters connected with the arts is so strangely deficient, we have come to understand by the term ‘glass,’ when used without further explanation, what is called in the trade ‘hollow ware,’ the verrerie of the French; in other words—vessels of glass. The term may also be extended to include various minor applications of the material—beads, small ornaments, etc., what the French call verroterie. But the application of glass to windows, especially when coloured and stained glass is in question, to say nothing of work in mosaic, is usually, although not always, held to lie outside this narrower connotation of the word.

Now it happens that for us this restriction is in every way convenient. For though the material basis is the same, it is evident that both the artist who works in mosaic and the designer of stained windows are concerned, each in his department, with artistic problems only incidentally connected with the material in which they work. In other words, the art element in both these crafts only becomes prominent at a stage when the actual preparation of the glass is completed. It is, however, certainly a pity that there is no English word which would not only clearly connote the class of objects with which I have here to deal, but which would at the same time distinctly comprise nothing beyond.

I have now explained the somewhat restricted and artificial sense of the word glass that I propose to accept in this work. But for a moment let us pass to the other extreme, and going beyond the ordinary connotation of the term include in it the glazes of pottery—the word ‘glaze’ is in its origin the same as glass—as well as the many forms of enamel. In all these cases we are dealing with substances of similar composition. They may all probably be traced back to a common origin, so that from an evolutionary point of view we have here an instance of the development of the complex and varied from the simple and single. Looking at the question in another way, the art of the enameller, using the term in a restricted sense, may be held to be subsidiary both to that of the potter and of the glass-worker; while many of the problems that arise in treating of the glazes of fictile wares—questions as to fusibility, or as to the colours employed and the changes of these colours during the firing—turn up again in the manufacture of glass. We shall see that experience gained in following the processes of one art may serve to throw light upon the difficulties and problems of the other.

Historically the connection between glass and pottery is not so close. In some degree the prevalence of one art has tended to oust the other, or to relegate it to an inferior position. The Greeks, who carried the potter’s art to such perfection, knew little about glass—it was long an exotic substance for them. The Romans, on the other hand, who in the first centuries of our era first fully appreciated and developed the capacities of glass, produced little pottery of artistic interest. In the sixteenth century, in Umbria and Tuscany, where the finest majolica was made, we hear nothing of the manufacture of glass, while on the other hand the fayence of Venice, at this time pre-occupied with her glass, was of subsidiary importance. If we turn to the home of porcelain, in China glass has always held a subordinate position, while in Japan it was until recent days practically unknown.

Were a comparison to be made between the development of the various minor arts, it would be difficult to find a wider contrast than that between the history of porcelain and that of glass. The knowledge of porcelain was confined for nearly a thousand years to China, the country where it was first made, and where it was slowly brought to perfection. Let loose, as it were, in the West early in the eighteenth century, it had then a short period of glory, but before the end of the century the art had already fallen upon evil days. The manufacture of glass, on the other hand, had long been carried on in Egypt, and perhaps in other Eastern lands, by a primitive process, although it only became an article of general use after the discovery of the blowing-iron. When and where this discovery was made we do not know—perhaps somewhere in Syria or Mesopotamia, in the third or second century before Christ. The art of blowing glass was known, no doubt, if not fully developed, at the time when the kingdoms of the Ptolemies and of the Seleucidæ fell under the rule of the Romans. By them it was before long brought to perfection and carried into every corner of the West, so that by the second or third century of our era the production of glass in Europe was probably greater than at any subsequent time, at least until quite recent days. Nor was the art of glass-making completely extinguished by ‘the advance of the barbarians.’ Indeed, some of the Germanic tribes not impossibly brought with them a knowledge of the process not only of preparing but also of blowing glass, picked up on their journeyings through East Europe, or perhaps even learned in Western Asia. This was an instance of the passage to the North and West of the arts of civilisation, by what we may call the back-road of Europe, in opposition to the high-roads that led directly from Italy by way of the Rhone and the Rhine.

But in the West the manufacture, though continuously carried on in many spots, was after the fall of the Western Empire relegated to the woods,—for nearly a thousand years little glass was produced of any artistic interest. Indeed, but few examples of this forest or green glass of the Middle Ages have survived to our time. During all this long interval, in one direction only, in the West, was any advance made. Within this period falls the great development of stained glass: we must turn to the glorious windows of the cathedrals of France and other Western lands, to see what the glass-workers of the time were capable of producing. In the East, on the other hand, in the lands ruled from Constantinople or influenced by Byzantine civilisation, what we know of the glass of the early Middle Ages is almost confined to the mosaic coverings of the walls of the contemporary churches. But just as distinctly as the glass in the windows of the Gothic churches, this mosaic work, for the reason we have already given, falls outside our limits.

It was not till the end of the twelfth century that any important advance was made in our narrower department of ‘hollow ware.’ Among the many beautiful things made during that glorious season of artistic production that had its start about this time in Egypt (or perhaps, rather, in the lands between the Persian Gulf and the Mediterranean)—except it be the inlaid metal work—there is nothing that now interests us so much as the enamelled glass, the beautiful ware that culminated in the magnificent Cairene mosque lamps of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. The art of enamelling on glass passed over to Venice in the fifteenth century, perhaps earlier, and there in the next century the manufacture of the famous cristallo was finally achieved, and complete mastery was obtained in the working of this pure white glass. A fresh start was now given to the industry in the north by means of the Venetian glass-workers, who were sought for in every country to teach their new methods.

In Germany alone did some of the traditions of the old forest-workers of ‘green-glass’ survive. By the end of the seventeenth century the German glass, in some respects to be regarded as a compromise between the old and new, had become the most important in Europe. For a hundred years the products of ‘the mountain fringe of Bohemia’ held the premier position, but towards the end of the eighteenth century this place was taken by the facetted flint-glass of England. It is certainly remarkable that it is only of quite recent years that any such prominent position could be claimed for France, which heretofore had been content to follow in the wake first of Venice and then of Germany and of England. At the present day, however, this at least may be said—that France is almost the only country where any really artistic work in glass, apart from the reproduction of old patterns and old methods, is being produced.

This hasty sketch of the history of glass-making will help us to understand why it is that in following the development of the art in so many lands, and for a period of more than three thousand years, there is no need to linger for any time except at a few of the more important étapes. Indeed such a procedure is forced upon us, for much of the road is quite barren, other parts are unexplored, while for whole stages we pass through prosaic districts where we find little of artistic merit to detain us.

The periods, then, of real importance in the history of glass, either from the cultur-historisch or from a purely artistic point of view, are separated by long intervals, during which little of interest was produced. The primitive glass of Egypt, the varied productions of the first centuries of the Roman Empire, the enamelled glass of the Saracens, and the Venetian glass of the Renaissance—this exhausts all that we find either of commanding historic interest or of superlative artistic merit. What follows—the German and the Netherlandish glass of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries—is still of some importance under both these heads. I can hardly say so much of the English glass of the eighteenth century; but this glass must not be neglected—it is English, and it is highly prized by many enthusiastic collectors.

It will be seen that there is a long gap between the first and second of our critical periods—between the beginning of the primitive Egyptian and the earliest Roman glass. This gap will be filled, in some measure, by some account of the rare surviving specimens of glass that can claim an Assyrian origin, of the glass pastes of the Mycenæan age, and of the few examples of glass that can be strictly classed as Greek of the classical age. So again of the second long hiatus—the interval of nearly a thousand years between the period of the Roman glass and that of the Saracens,—this may be partly filled by the few scanty pieces that have come down to us from Sassanian and Byzantine times. To this period belongs also the glass of the Germanic tribes of northern Europe, above all that of our Anglo-Saxon ancestors.

Some notice must also be taken of a few districts situated on bypaths, of the glass from countries that lie away from the main centres of production—these latter centres, I may note, until comparatively recent times are mostly to be found in close connection with the basin of the Mediterranean. To these outlying districts we must finally turn to examine the glass of Persia, of India, and above all the glass of China.

An interesting chapter, nay, a separate work, might be devoted to the classification and history of a class of objects of which the manufacture has been carried on continuously and with few changes from the time of the Middle Empire in Egypt—of beads, I mean, and other allied applications of glass, included in the French term verroterie. But, however great the claims to attention of such objects, their interest is rather archæological than artistic, and it will be sufficient to treat of them incidentally along with the, for us, more important class of ‘hollow ware’ produced with the aid of the glass-blower’s tube.

Properties and Composition of Glass

Christopher Merret, our earliest English writer on glass, sets down the properties of the material under twenty-six heads, ‘by which we may easily differentiate it from all other bodies.’ From these I will select some four or five which will be sufficient for our purpose. Thus, of glass, he says: ‘’Tis a concrete of salt and sand or stones. ’Tis artificial. It melts in a strong fire. When melted ’tis tenacious and sticks together.... When melted it cleaves to iron, etc. ’Tis ductile whilst red-hot, and fashionable into any form, but not malleable, and it may be blown into a hollowness’ (Art of Glass, 1662). Here we have briefly expressed the real differentiæ of glass. It is rather by these properties than by any virtue of transparency or of definite chemical composition that glass is to be distinguished from all other bodies; and it is only by duly taking advantage of these properties that the preparation of a vessel of glass is rendered possible.

In passing from a liquid to a solid state there intervenes a viscous stage when the glass may be gathered at the end of an iron rod; the ductile, tenacious mass may now be drawn out into long threads, whose length and fineness are only limited by the difficulty of maintaining the requisite temperature. Again, if the rod upon which the mass is gathered is hollow, the glass may be blown out into a vesicle or bulb, the starting-point from which an endless variety of objects, bottles, cups, tubes, or even flat sheets of glass, may be subsequently formed. Until advantage was taken of this remarkable property of glass—its capability, I mean, of being blown out into a hollow vesicle when in a viscid condition—the art of the glass-maker was in a primitive stage. We may compare the glass prepared without the aid of the blowing-tube—that of the ancient Egyptians, for instance—to the pottery made by hand before the invention of the potter’s wheel.

In dealing with the practical side of our subject—the materials from which glass is made, how these materials are first fritted and then fused together, and how the fused mass is subsequently dealt with—the best plan will be to approach the questions in each case from the point of view of the time and country. But as, on the one hand, for classical times, our sources of information for these practical details are but scanty, and as, on the other, I am not concerned with the industrial developments of the nineteenth century, it will be well to postpone any fuller treatment of such matters until I come to speak of the glass of late Mediæval and Renaissance times. I shall then be able to make use of contemporary accounts which will throw light on the processes of manufacture.

A few preliminary notes on the chemical and physical properties of glass may, however, not be out of place.

Glass, Merret tells us, is ‘a concrete of salt and sand or stones.’ This, in modern scientific language, we should express by saying that it is a combination of silica with an alkali. But these substances alone are not enough. You cannot make a glass fit for practical use from a pure quartz sand with the addition of nothing else than a salt of potash or soda. Such a glass—a simple alkaline silicate—would indeed be transparent, but it would be difficult to work and very fragile. In all cases there is need of a second base, and this, to speak generally, should be either lime or oxide of lead. The latter base we may for the present neglect; speaking generally, it is the presence of lime that gives the working qualities and the requisite toughness. These, then, are the essential materials for the preparation of glass. Other substances may be present; alumina, for example, or one or other of the oxides of iron, but as a rule the presence of these latter bases is not desired—the glass would be better without them.

Putting aside, then, for the present the glass in which lead is a constituent, as well as that in which the soda is replaced by potash, it is remarkable how little difference of composition we find in examples of glass of the most divergent origin. Let us compare the composition of a Roman ‘lachrymatory’ with that of a piece of modern English plate-glass. In a hundred parts we find—

These examples are indeed two extreme terms of a long but continuous series. A sample of Saracenic glass of the fourteenth or of Venetian glass of the sixteenth century, would yield on analysis much the same result.[^[1]]

This, then, may be regarded as the normal composition of such glass as I shall have to deal with in this history. The main question has generally been—How can the sand or silica, the premier element in glass, be best converted into a substance which shall in external aspect resemble as closely as possible the native rock crystal (itself pure silica), but which at the same time shall be not only fusible, but after fusing pass on cooling through a plastic condition when it may be expanded into a vesicle and otherwise worked up into various shapes? Long practical experience has shown that this can be best effected by adding to the sand materials containing both soda and lime, and as far as possible nothing beyond these bases. A glass thus compounded we may take as our normal type, but, as I have said, the soda may in certain cases be replaced by potash and the lime by lead oxide.

Silica in any case is the essential element in glass, and in any normal glass there may be present from 60 to 75 per cent. If, however, the bases with which it is combined have a high combining number—and this is especially the case with lead—the percentage of silica may fall below the former figure. Thus, in a bottle glass with 12 per cent. of iron oxide and alumina[^[2]] the proportion is reduced to 54 per cent., and in a flint glass with 43 per cent. of lead oxide there is only 45 per cent. of silica.

It was once the fashion among English writers on glass to classify the substance under the heads of crown-glass, bottle-glass, broad-glass, plate-glass, flint-glass, etc.; but such a classification, not very logical in itself, would be of no use to us.[^[3]]

Glass, of course, varies in optical properties, in hardness, and in fusibility, but I do not think that any useful classification could be based directly on these properties. But there is one distinction of the greatest importance technically and geographically, and this is between the glass of maritime countries in which the alkali is soda, and that of inland and forest districts where the soda is replaced by potash. In the first group, by far the most important—I have indeed regarded such glass as the normal type—may, it would seem, be placed not only the ‘primitive’ glass of the Eastern Mediterranean, but probably all the glass of the Romans. To it belongs also the glass of the Saracens and the greater part of the artistic glass of the Renaissance, including the Venetian glass, although in this last the soda is often in part replaced by an appreciable quantity of potash. The potash group, on the other hand, includes the old voirre à fougère of the French and the wald-glas of the Germans. In addition, almost the whole of the glass of higher quality made in later days in Germany and in the Bohemian borderlands belongs essentially to this last class. Finally, it may be mentioned that in the case of the abnormal family where the lime is replaced by oxide of lead, the alkali is invariably potash. Of this family our English flint-glass is the most important member.

With regard to the hardness of glass, Merret mentions as the thirteenth property possessed by that substance, ‘that it only receives sculpture or cutting from a Diamond or Emery stone.’ But such a statement would be likely to give an exaggerated idea of the hardness of glass. If we take the scale of hardness used by the mineralogist, it will be found that there are few kinds of glass that do not fall between the fifth and sixth divisions of that scale. In other words, it would be difficult to find a specimen of glass on which a crystal of apatite (phosphate of lime) would make any impression, whereas all glass in ordinary use is readily scratched by felspar. It is possible, however, that some kinds of Bohemian glass may equal the latter mineral in hardness; it is indeed a common statement that certain Bohemian or German ‘combustion-tubes’ will strike fire with steel. On the other hand, the presence of lead tends to make a soft glass; our cut flint is perceptibly softer than common window-glass, and perhaps the most important defect of the paste used to imitate precious stones—such paste may contain as much as 50 per cent. of lead oxide—is to be found in its comparative softness.

At the same time, the greater the amount of lead in a glass, the greater its dispersive power on the light that passes through it. Hence the brilliancy and fire of flint-glass, and still more of artificial gems.

Apart from the varieties containing lead, samples of glass differ little in weight; the specific gravity may range between 2·4 and 2·8. That of flint-glass, on the other hand, varies from 3 to 3·8; indeed in some optical glasses containing a large percentage of lead, and again in the paste used for false jewellery, the specific gravity may be as high as 4·5 or even 5.

The high melting-point, or more definitely the high softening-point, of certain kinds of Bohemian and German glass, makes them invaluable in the laboratory of the chemist. On the other hand, the ready fusibility of glass containing lead was, as we shall see, one of the causes that promoted the adoption of such a glass in our furnaces.

Thus we find that the potash-lime glass of Bohemia, containing a high percentage of silica, excels in hardness and resistance to heat; on the other hand, the various kinds of glass containing lead are soft and easily fusible, and at the same time they combine a high specific gravity with a wide dispersive power. What we may call the maritime or soda-lime glass takes an intermediate place in all these respects. This is indeed an additional reason for regarding this great family of ‘Mediterranean’ glass as the normal type.

The two essential elements, then, required by the glass-maker are, in the first place, silica, and secondly an alkali, in each case as pure as possible, and in a convenient form for mixing and fusing together. I do not propose here to do more than indicate the source of these materials.

The silica has at all times been derived either from solid quartz, whether in the form of rock crystal or of the white pebbles from the beds of Alpine rivers, or more often from sand obtained either by excavation or from the seashore.

In the case of the alkali, the maritime people of the South extracted their soda, for the most part, from the ashes of certain plants growing in salt marshes near the sea. Most of these maritime plants belong to the natural order of the Chenopodiaceæ, the goose-foot or spinach tribe, and we find among them various species of Salsola, Chenopodium, Salicornia, etc. These plants were all included in old days under the vague name of kali. The roughly lixiviated ashes exported from Spain were known in the trade as barilla; those from the Levant as roquetta.[^[4]] In other instances the impure alkaline carbonates were found ready at hand—as in the case of the natron deposits not far from Cairo. In the North the principal source of soda was till recent days the varech or kelp, cast up on the west coast of France and of Scotland.

The inland folk, on the other hand, had to find the alkali for their glass in the ashes of plants. This ‘potash’ was obtained by lixiviating the ashes of various trees and bushes—in Germany the ashes of beechwood, in France those of the bracken or fougère, were most in favour.

The quality of the glass depended in great measure upon the care taken in the preparation of the soda or potash. But the more impure ashes had this advantage: the amount of lime, to say nothing of the iron oxide and alumina, that they contained, rendered unnecessary in many cases the addition of any further basic material; even the comparatively pure Spanish barilla contained as much as seven per cent. of lime. In other cases that base had to be added, generally in the form of a more or less impure limestone.

Of the furnaces and of the various operations that come into play in the preparation of the glass I shall treat as the occasion arises in the following chapters. As, however, in this book we are—at least after the ‘primitive glass’ has been dealt with in the next chapter—almost exclusively concerned with vessels of ‘hollow ware’ made by a blowing process, it may be well to indicate, in this introductory chapter, the nature of this process, and to give the names of the principal tools used. These implements—apart from quite modern improvements with which I am not concerned here—are of the simplest nature, and have undergone little change during the last five hundred years—perhaps I might say since the days of the Romans.

The molten glass is collected on the extremity of the blowing-iron to form a ‘gathering.’ This gathering, while still in a soft condition, is rolled upon the ‘marver’ into a cylindrical mass. By blowing down the tube this mass is now distended to form a hollow pear-shaped vesicle, for which it will be convenient to adopt the French term paraison. It is from this paraison that a start is made to form by a ‘spinning’ or ‘flashing’ process a sheet of broad or crown glass; again, the vesicle may be made to assume a cylindrical shape, and then opened out to form larger sheets of glass; or finally—and this is for us the most important—by holding the blowing-iron to which the bulb of glass is attached in a vertical position (or sometimes by swinging it over the workman’s head), and then by shaping it by means of certain simple tools, the paraison is started on the course by which it will finally be converted into a bottle or into a bowl-shaped vessel. I will here only dwell on one point. It is evident that so long as the glass is attached to the blowing-iron, although a simple bulb-shaped vessel may be formed, there is so far no means of shaping or finishing the upper portion. Before this can be done the further extremity of the paraison must be attached by means of a small gathering of molten glass to a light tapering rod of iron, the ‘punto’ or ‘pontil.’ The vessel—for so the paraison may now be called—is at this stage removed from the blowing-iron. This is done by ‘wetting it off’ by means of a rod of moistened iron. The glass vessel, now attached by its base to the pontil, is reheated, and the further treatment taken in hand by a workman seated on a stool with long projecting arms, on which (or on the knee of the workman) the pontil is rotated. The shaping is chiefly done by an iron instrument called the ‘procello,’ or spring-tool, formed like a pair of sugar-tongs by two blades connected by an elastic bow. Finally, the edges are finished off by shears and scissors of various forms, which cut the hot glass as if it were a piece of soft leather. The now finished vessel is removed from the pontil by wetting the point of attachment, and is taken to the annealing oven.

In this very summary account of the processes involved in making, say, a flask of simple shape, I have only dwelt upon such instruments and methods as have for several centuries been in general use.

The Decay of Glass

Before ending this preliminary chapter, a few words may be said of the changes that take place in glass in the course of time from the action of the surrounding medium.[^[5]] These changes are in the main due to the moisture and carbonic acid contained either in the soil or in the atmosphere. Perhaps what is most striking in this action is on the one hand the apparently capricious and irregular way in which the glass is attacked, and on the other the great beauty of the iridescent effects that so often accompany the process of decay.

As to the apparent irregularity in the progress of the superficial decay, it would seem that, apart from differences in the chemical composition of the glass, much depends upon the preservation of the original smooth ‘epidermis.’ Once this is impaired, whether by accidental scratches or by the growth of fungus or lichen, the carbonic acid or the ammonia salts contained in the air or soil find, in the presence of moisture, a secure lodgment, and the work of decay proceeds rapidly. Thus in the case of the little flasks of primitive glass of which I shall have to speak in the next chapter, in one example it may be found that the smooth skin of the glass has for more than three thousand years remained absolutely intact, while in another specimen from a neighbouring tomb the glass not only on the surface, but far into the interior, has taken on a talc-like or porcelainous consistency, and the brilliant colours have for the most part disappeared.

There is no need to enter into the details of the chemical processes involved in this process of decay. Suffice to say that the action is one of the same nature as that which has played so important a part in the geological changes of the earth’s surface, especially in the disintegration of the granitic rocks. It depends upon the power possessed by carbonic acid, in the presence of moisture, of decomposing the silicates of the alkalis. The soluble carbonate of soda or of potash thus formed is then quickly washed out from the surface of the glass. There remains, in the form either of iridescent scales or of an opaque pearly crust, a layer consisting not perhaps of pure silica, but of an acid silicate of lime, alumina, or lead as the case may be.

Now a piece of clear glass may appear to the eye to be devoid of internal structure. But the ‘metal’ has, we know, in every case been subjected during the manufacture to a complicated series of involutions and doublings, to say nothing of the subsequent inflation if the glass has been subjected to a blowing process. When decay sets in—something similar may at times be seen in the case of a piece of wrought iron—this complicated formation is in part revealed, for it is evident that upon it the lines taken by the decay are in a measure dependent. On blown glass especially, the disintegration of the surface tends to result in a scaly formation resembling that of the shell of an oyster. As a result of the decomposition of light in its passage through these fine superficial films, and of the partial reflection from the back of the scales at various depths, we get those unsurpassed iridescent effects that we associate above all with the glass of the Romans. That these brilliant hues are dependent entirely upon the physical structure is well shown by the total disappearance of the colours when the surface of a piece of iridescent glass is moistened, as well as by their reappearance when the glass is again dried.

Lead of glass is much less liable to such changes, but where in such glass decay has once set in, the whole mass may be converted into a white horny substance.

In other cases the surface of a piece of clear white glass will become gradually filled with a series of minute intersecting fissures, which in time may penetrate the whole mass. When this change has been fully developed we get a true crackle-glass, not to be confounded with the frosted glass of Venice mentioned in [Chapter XIII]. This fissuring of the glass-mass in its various stages may be traced in many of the specimens of Venetian, Netherlandish, and English glass at South Kensington. When fully developed the effect is at times very beautiful.

The tints of coloured glass may, it would seem, change in the course of time. Colourless glass also, from which the greenish shades derived from protoxide of iron have been removed by the addition of binoxide of manganese, is above all liable to assume in the course of time a purple tint under the action of sunlight. Again, if sulphur be present in glass, as is the case where sulphate of soda has been employed as a source of the alkali, the soda salt may be reduced by any protoxide of iron that is present. The sulphide of sodium and the sesqui-oxide of iron thus gradually formed will both of them tend to give a yellowish tint to the glass.[^[6]]

Changes of this nature may occasionally have come about in the stained glass of the windows of our Gothic churches—the flesh-tints, which we know were produced in early days by manganese, may in the course of time have become of a more pronounced purple hue.

CHAPTER II
THE PRIMITIVE GLASS OF THE EGYPTIANS AND SYRIANS

From a technical point of view the history of glass might be divided into three periods—periods, it is true, of very unequal length and relative importance.

The first of these, one more especially of archæological interest, would include all the glass made before the discovery of the process of forming a vesicle by blowing through a hollow tube. Nearly all the glass that finds its way into our collections would be classed in the second period; this would extend from the beginning of our era to the end of the eighteenth century. In the course of these long centuries, the work of the glass-maker has of course been influenced by the varying schools and fashions of different ages and countries, but technically there is no great advance to be noted in the work of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries when compared with that of the early days of the Roman Empire; and this is still more true if we consider merely the materials employed, their preparation, and the methods of their fusion. But before the end of the eighteenth century a great change had set in. The manufacture of glass in England and France had become an important industry, and we enter upon the third or industrial period. With the general advance in mechanical processes that is so characteristic of the time, the old methods of the working of glass were swept aside, so that before the middle of the last century, whatever of interest was to be found in the manufacture and in its results depended upon anything rather than upon the artistic qualities of the glass made.

Now, as I have said, the characteristic and dominant quality of glass is to be found in its capability of being blown into vessels of varying shape when in a viscous and semi-fluid state. All glass then, made at a time when advantage had not yet been taken of that essential property of the material, we may class together in a primitive group. This line of demarcation is as important, to return to a comparison I have already made, as that between hand-moulded pottery and that thrown on the potter’s wheel. The objects made in the earlier period by primitive processes were mostly small, and their merit depended chiefly upon the brilliancy and the skilful juxtaposition of a few simple colours—they may for the most part be classed as verroterie.

It has long been acknowledged that it is from Egypt that our earliest specimens of glass have come. But until quite recently the greatest misconceptions have prevailed as to the age and the methods of preparation of Egyptian glass. Misled by an erroneous interpretation of what are probably representations of metallurgical processes, on the walls of Twelfth Dynasty tombs at Beni Hassan and elsewhere, it was inferred that the art of blowing glass was known to the Egyptians at least as long ago as the days of the Middle Empire; by others the art was carried back to a still earlier period. We now have almost full assurance that glass in a true sense was practically unknown to the Egyptians before the time of the Eighteenth Dynasty (say between 1600 and 1500 B.C.),[^[7]] and that for at least a thousand years after that period all that was made was produced by a primitive process in which the blowing-iron found no part. We have, unfortunately, up to the present time absolutely no evidence to show in what country or at what date this new process—I mean the blowing of a vesicle of glass—first came into use. There is, as we shall see, some reason to look for it rather in Western Asia than in Egypt, but the important point to bear in mind is that it was only after the introduction of this process of blowing, first to Alexandria and then to the Rome of the early empire, that the employment of glass for objects of daily use became in any way general.

Glass, indeed, in these early days, whether in Egypt or in the Greek world of the Mycenæan age, was something very different from what we now understand by the term. We must ‘think away’ a great deal of the modern connotation of the word. We must, above all, think of the material in connection with the native precious or semi-precious stones that it more or less resembled, and which were used along with it for decorative purposes. We do not know the Egyptian name for glass, but probably, like the Greeks, they divided all the hard stony bodies used in the arts into such as were ‘dug up’—natural products, that is, which they found ready at hand—and such as had been artificially prepared, and above all previously melted (the Λίθος όρωρυγμένη on the one hand, and the Λίθος χυτή on the other).

If, as I have said, there is little evidence for the existence of glass in Egypt before the Eighteenth Dynasty, it is quite otherwise with regard to a very similar substance, identical almost in chemical composition—one whose history can be traced much further back. On beads of clear rock crystal, dating from the First Dynasty, and it would seem from an even earlier period in some cases, we find a coating of turquoise blue transparent glaze[^[8]]—the very glaze, in fact, that has given a prevailing tint to the vast series of smaller objects of Egyptian art that we see in the cases of our museums. A similar colour, I may observe, continued in favour in Mohammedan times, and indeed gives a dominant note to Oriental art in contrast to the ochry tints of yellow, red, and brown prevalent in the West.

The Egyptians soon learned to apply this blue glaze—essentially a silicate of soda and copper—to the surface of other natural stones, and above all to a fritty porous earthenware, the so-called Egyptian porcelain. Such an alkaline glaze, indeed, will only adhere to a porous base of this kind, with which it becomes united on firing, by a chemical reaction, or at least by the solution in it of some of the silicates of alumina and lime in the clay. This glaze differs essentially from those used on true porcelain—these last are almost of the same composition as the ground they cover—but, as in the case of the glazes on porcelain, so the materials of the Egyptian glazes were probably first incorporated together in a partially fused frit which was then ground and mixed with water to form a soup-like ‘slip,’ into which the object to be glazed was dipped. There have been brought from Egypt a few rare objects carved out of a blue frit (probably similar to that used in the preparation of glazes), for which a very early date has been claimed. But such a frit is no true glass.

The Egyptians had from the earliest periods been adepts in the carving of native minerals and rocks, and evidently found great pleasure in the strange markings and contrasts of colour found on their polished surfaces. Already in pre-dynastic times they availed themselves of their native granites, porphyries and conglomerates; from these materials they manufactured those large, carefully turned vases of which so many have lately been brought from Egypt. For smaller objects—jewellery, beads, and inlay of various descriptions—they had command of a wide scale of colours—reds and tawny yellows from jasper, purple from the amethyst, greens from root of emerald and from a special kind of felspar, and blue from the turquoise and (at a very early period) from the lapis lazuli. But the stones to which they had recourse for their favourite blues and greens were rare, and they were therefore the more ready to find a cheaper substitute in glass. Again, in Egypt, no stone was in greater favour than the native alabaster,[^[9]] with its bands and zig-zag lines of transparent crystals in an opaque base of a warm milky hue. But there was no play of colour in this latter substance, and its very softness restricted the uses to which it could be put. In glass they found a substance hard enough to allow of more delicate forms, and on it chevrons of yellow and white could be traced upon a nearly opaque ground of turquoise or dark blue. Some such origin in native stones we may perhaps find for the decorative motives of the little vases, variously known as phialæ, unguentaria, alabastra, which were in such favour not only with the Egyptians, but perhaps even more so among the inhabitants of the islands and coasts of the Mediterranean, during a period of at least a thousand years. It is indeed these little vases that are the most characteristic product of the first period of glass-making.

It is not too much to say that the little we know of the processes of these early Egyptian glass-makers is derived from notices on the subject scattered through the memoirs in which Dr. Flinders Petrie has described the results of his excavations, more especially from the report issued in 1894, on his discoveries at Tell-el-Amarna. In the introduction to the catalogue of the Egyptian Exhibition held at the Burlington Fine Arts Club in 1895, Dr. Petrie has summed up our knowledge on this subject. I will quote the description of the method by which, according to him, these alabastra were made.

[PLATE II]

2

1

3

SMALL VASES OF “PRIMITIVE” GLASS
1. EGYPTIAN, NINETEENTH DYNASTY. 2. PROBABLY FROM GREEK ISLANDS. 3. ŒNOCHOE, FROM THE SLADE COLLECTION.

‘A metal rod of the size of the intended interior of the neck, and rather conical, was coated at the end with a ball of sand held together by cloth and string. This was covered with glass, probably by winding a thread of glass round it, as large beads of this age are thus made. The vase could then be reheated as often as needed for working by holding it in a furnace, the metal rod forming a handle, and the sand inside the vase preventing its collapse. Threads of coloured glass could then be wound round it and incorporated by rolling; the wavy pattern was produced by dragging the surface in different directions, the foot was pressed into shape by pincers, the brim was formed, and the handles were put on. Lastly, on cooling, the metal rod would contract and come loose from the neck, and after it was withdrawn the sand could be rubbed out from the body of the vase.’

The wavy decoration thus obtained was of two types: (i) formed simply by a succession of crescent-shape curves, or (ii) by means of a double drag, the pattern assumed a form like a frond of palm leaves, or still more like these leaves plaited into a basket. (Cf. [Pl. II.])

The number of these little vases that can be definitely attributed to the Eighteenth Dynasty (say about the sixteenth or fifteenth century B.C.) is small, but it is worthy of note that for brilliancy of colour and for purity of the glassy paste, the early examples are unsurpassed in later times. This is certainly a remarkable fact, especially if we are to regard the art as a new one. I cannot enter here into the evidence that would seem to point to a foreign origin for this early Egyptian glass—it will be enough to mention the conquests of Thothmes III. in Syria, and the close relation of his successor, Akhenaten, the ‘heretic king,’ with Syria and Babylonia, as shown by his marriage, and by the famous Tell-el-Amarna tablets. As bearing on this question I may refer to certain paintings on a tomb of this age at Drag Aboul Neggah, near Thebes (reproduced in the Revue Archéologique, 1895, Pl. 15), which represent the unloading of a foreign trading-vessel. We can distinguish here the merchants offering certain objects of value to an Egyptian official; among these are certain striped vases which have been doubtfully recognised as of glass. In the hieroglyphics accompanying wall paintings of this period we more than once find that vessels of rock crystal and lapis lazuli are mentioned, as well as blocks of uncut stones, and neither by the hieroglyphics used nor by the representation of the objects would it be easy to distinguish the latter material from lumps of glass. Again, Syrian workmen are known to have been employed at this time in Egypt, and nowhere would this be more likely than in the immediate neighbourhood of the palace of the king at Tell-el-Amarna, where the glass-works described by Dr. Petrie were situated.

All this, however, is mere conjecture, while as an argument for the native origin of Egyptian glass we have the indisputable fact that the manufacture was carried on in the new town established by Akhenaten at Tell-el-Amarna (circa 1450-1400 B.C.). This is made clear by the discoveries of Dr. Petrie in the winter of 1891-92. Among the waste-heaps of some important glass factories he has found enough material to put it beyond doubt that glass was there prepared from its raw constituents. First, with regard to the frits, the essential preliminary stage in the manufacture of glass: as I have said, some such half-fused material must have been long in use by the Egyptians in the preparation of their blue glazes. Complete freedom from iron was attained in this case (just as in after days by the Venetians) by the employment of crushed pebbles of white quartz as the source of the silica. These pebbles served also for the floor of the furnace, and they were doubtless more easily crushed after being thus used for some time. The fritting-pans, to judge from some large fragments of frit that turned up, were shallow bowls some ten inches across. These pans were, it would seem, supported for firing by cylindrical jars resembling the seggars of porcelain works. The shape and size of the crucibles in which the frit was subsequently melted may be inferred from some masses of glass found in the rubbish. These masses had been allowed to cool in the melting-pot, and the presence of frothy and worthless matter at the top was a proof that the glass was not merely remelted in them, but prepared on the spot from the above-mentioned frit. The glass was left to solidify in the crucible, and when cold, the crucible, as well as the scum at the top, was chipped away, leaving a clear lump of good glass. Dr. Petrie thinks that this glass was not remelted as a whole for subsequent working, but that lumps of suitable size were chipped off, and these, being heated to softness, ‘were then laid on a flat surface and rolled by a bar worked diagonally across them; ... the marks of this diagonal rolling are seen on the finished rolls.’ The rods thus produced were now drawn out to form a cane, or, if previously rolled flat, a thin ribbon. Beads were formed by winding these canes or threads of glass round a wire, or rather round a fine rod of hammered bronze, for wire-drawing was an invention of a much later date; such rods have indeed been found with the unfinished beads still on them. Similar canes of glass were doubtless worked in to the sides of the little vases to form the banded and chevron decoration which I have already described.

The silica for this glass was derived, as we have seen, from quartz pebbles, but we have no information as to the source of the other important constituent, the alkali. It is known, however, that the glass of the ancients was essentially a soda-glass, made for the most part in maritime regions. Again, the possibility of obtaining an abundant supply of fuel has always been an important element in the selection of localities for glass-works. Now in the neighbourhood of Thebes fuel must always have been scarce and dear, and it is uncertain whether there was any source of soda near at hand. We may perhaps regard the glass-works of Tell-el-Amarna as due in the main to the caprice of that eccentric sovereign Akhenaten. They were probably started at his orders to supply the demand for the new material then coming into favour at his court. In so far as the making of glass ever became an industry in Egypt, we must look rather to the neighbourhood of the Delta for its development. There at least fuel would be more abundant, and there a supply of soda was at hand in the ashes of marine plants, even if the natron of the adjacent salt lakes was not yet used for the purpose.[^[10]] But until a much later date, glass was always a somewhat rare substance in Egypt, and was, it would seem, never produced on a large scale.

I must now say something as to the source of the colours with which the Egyptians stained their glass. In the absence of any satisfactory analyses, we are strangely in the dark on this interesting question.[^[11]] But everything points to the predominance of copper as a colouring material at an early period, so much so that we may perhaps consider—and this is a suggestion that has indeed been already made by a French writer—that the invention of glazes in the first place, and then that of glass, were offshoots of the metallurgy of copper, and that these industries may therefore be especially connected with the copper age. In any case, it was in all probability not, as in later days, a more or less transparent and colourless glass, but rather one of a pale or dark blue colour, that at the commencement formed the basis to which a decoration of other colours was added.

The famous blue of the Egyptians, of which we hear from Vitruvius and other later writers, was essentially a silicate of soda, lime, and copper. It should be borne in mind that without the presence of the first two bases—the lime and the soda—a good copper blue in glass or glaze cannot be obtained. Indeed in the case of porcelain and fayence, the blues obtained from copper have always been confined to various shades of turquoise, as in the well-known glazes and enamels of the Chinese and the French, and even these turquoise blues, always, as we have said, containing lime and soda as well as copper, have only been produced with great difficulty. The mastery of a complete series of copper blues, ranging through every shade from a blue-black to a pale greenish turquoise, we may thus regard as a special triumph of the old Egyptians. At one period a darker shade has been in favour, at another a paler hue, according as the lapis lazuli on the one hand, or the turquoise or green felspar on the other, was taken as the standard of excellence, so that the shade of colour of the glaze on a scarab or a bead may at times throw some light on its date.

Distinct shades of green, apart from greenish blue, were much less in favour with the Egyptians, nor did they ever attain to the brilliant tints of the malachite. A green glass, generally comparatively transparent, was indeed at times obtained when a certain amount of iron was present in the materials employed; but this was merely an accidental modification of the blue. The pale tint of the green felspar was also imitated in an opaque glass used for inlaying.

For their reds the Egyptians were content to imitate the colour of the jasper, and here again they had recourse to copper; the transparent ruby tints of the mediæval workmen, whether obtained from copper or gold, were unknown to them. Their opaque red glass owed its colour to the presence, in large quantities, of the basic oxide of copper. In later specimens as much as 15 or even 20 per cent. has been found; some tin seems to be always present, giving an opaque enamel-like appearance to the Egyptian red—perhaps the colour was prepared directly from bronze. We often find this red paste oxidised on the surface; the coating of green carbonate then gives it the appearance of a richly patinated bronze, the blood-red body only showing when the specimen has been chipped. It is an interesting point that in early times the use of this red glass appears to have been confined to inlaid work—that is to say, it was never worked up with glass of other colours. This was, no doubt, for a practical reason: during the elaborate processes of patting, shaping, and reheating involved in the old system of working, the materials must have been exposed to a strong oxidising influence, and the basic red glass would thereby have lost its fine colour; it would also, perhaps, have injuriously affected the neighbouring colours. Some such difficulties in the working together of glasses of various colours may have influenced the Egyptians in adhering to their old system of inlays, employing, that is, small pieces, separately cast or cut out in the cold from slabs of glass of various colours. In such inlays the red paste was freely used from early times. On the other hand, I do not think that this fine copper red has ever been found on a glass vase of Egyptian provenance. On a few rare examples of later date (note especially two alabastra in the Slade collection, Nos. 15 and 35) we find indeed an opaque red combined with other colours, and in one case it forms the base ([Plate II.]). This red paste is of a peculiar spotty consistence, and I am inclined to think that the colouring matter in these examples is rather iron than copper. In later days the Egyptians made use of another tint, a fine orange. This colour, indeed, would seem to be the only addition to their palette during a period of more than fifteen hundred years.

The purple tint derived from oxide of manganese was known from very early times; the colour has been found in the glazes of the First Dynasty. It was, however, rarely used by the Egyptians for colouring glass. In some of the little vases from the Greek islands and elsewhere it has, however, been employed to form a zigzag of the usual type upon an opaque white ground. If we so rarely find this amethyst purple combined with other colours, this is probably for a reason of a similar nature to that dwelt upon in the case of the copper red.

Next to the two shades of blue, the colour most frequently found on Egyptian glass is a yellow, at times of a full mustard tint, but more often of a paler hue. Feather-like curved chevrons of this colour, combined with turquoise and opaque white on a deep blue ground, constitute indeed the normal type of decoration in a whole series of these little vases. I can find no record of any analysis of this yellow colour, but we may well compare it with the fine yellow glazes of the Chinese where the colour is derived from a mixture of an ochry earth with an oxide of antimony. There is no doubt that this last metal was known to the Egyptians; it was used at an early period by the women to darken the outline of their eyes.[^[12]]

What has been said of the colours used by the Egyptians applies equally to the whole series of this primitive glass, indeed to a large extent to the glass of the Romans as well. It will form, I hope, a solid introduction to the subject generally.

The little vases or unguentaria—by far the most important objects in this division of our subject—occur in Egypt in two forms. First, the true columnar kohl-pots, spreading out at the top in the form of a lotus capital. Secondly, globular jars with a pair of small handles: these jars are sometimes flattened at the sides so as to pass into the shape of a pilgrim’s flask. In a little vase of this latter form in the British Museum the paste is of a deep, somewhat translucent, brownish red ([Plate II.]), and this colour passes in other examples into a rich transparent honey-red or hyacinth tint. The colour in both cases is, I think, derived from iron.

Of quite exceptional interest is the little vase in the British Museum, bearing the prænomen of Thothmes III., painted in yellowish enamel round the shoulder. I say painted, for in this case the decoration is simply applied to the surface, and not incorporated into the glass, thus forestalling the later processes of enamelling upon glass. The vase in question is somewhat rudely formed; it is of an opaque paste of a remarkably fine turquoise hue, and the sides are decorated with three conventional trees also in yellow enamel. This vase has been regarded as the earliest dated specimen of true glass that is so far known to us.[^[13]]

The British Museum has lately acquired a curious vessel of glass, five inches in height, somewhat of the shape of a Greek crater. The wavy, dragged decoration on a pale slaty ground calls to mind certain early vases of wood or stone painted with a similar design. This vase, together with a cup of azure blue transparent paste, comes probably from the tomb of Amenophis II. Another little vase in the same collection, of aryballos outline, has been shaped apparently by the lathe—so accurate is the form—from a mass of opaque turquoise paste of frit-like nature.[^[14]]

It was in the tombs of Amenophis II. and III., in the Valley of the Kings, near Thebes, that the unique series of glass vases, now in the Cairo Museum, was found (excavations of 1898-99). On more than one of these is a cartouche, a rectangle of deep blue, containing the royal name, ‘inlaid’[^[15]] in several colours. One comparatively large vase (several of them are as much as eight inches in height) is decorated by three rosettes in low relief. The twelve petals are of blue, green, and red (the latter colour quite superficial) on a white ground. Still more remarkable is a vase with galloping horses and negroes; in this case the design is apparently inlaid on the interior, and only seen through the transparent body.

The little pots for cosmetics, in the shape of truncated cones, are usually made of a turquoise-glazed fayence. Those of glass are very rare; one in the British Museum is decorated on a nearly black base with splashes of white enamel; this enamel is now suffering from some kind of efflorescence and is falling off in scales. On another fragment in the Glass-Room we find yellow and white splashes on a black ground. This splashed ware is characteristic, I think, of the later dynasties—the twentieth and the twenty-first. We are reminded by it of a similar application of enamel colours to glass that was much in favour in France in the seventeenth century.

Apart from these little vases, the glass found in Egypt is confined to pieces for inlay and to beads or other small objects of verroterie. For the inlay the glass was rolled into slabs and cut out in the desired shape, the surface also being often carved in low relief: in later times the separate pieces were usually cast in open moulds. Beside the colours commonly used in the decoration of the vases, we find also an imitation of the pale green felspar, and the use of a red paste is, as I have said, more frequent. The individual pieces of the inlaid designs—they generally represent hieroglyphics, and are inserted into a basis of wood—are sometimes of a considerable size; some kneeling figures of a late period, found near Tanis, are as much as four inches in height. Mr. Griffith found here, among the ruins of houses dating from early Ptolemaic times, some traces of glass-works, which allow us to supplement in a measure what we know of the manufacture in more remote periods. It may be remarked, however, that on the one hand no vases of the old chevron type were discovered—and this is true, I think, of all the finds of glass from later deposits in Egypt—nor on the other hand, as far as I am aware, have any specimens of blown glass been found even among Ptolemaic remains. At Tanis were found many small moulds of terra-cotta and limestone into which the molten glass was run—so, at least, says Mr. Griffith (Egyptian Exploration Fund. Tell Nebeshah. 1888). In earlier times, at any rate, the process seems rather to have been to press down into the moulds little pellets of glass in a pasty state.

In the Glass-Room at the British Museum may be seen an interesting collection of this later glass of Ptolemaic or perhaps Roman date, found at Denderah. There are many fragments of glass paste destined probably to be fitted into hollows cut in a wooden plaque, the intervening surface being covered with gilt gesso. Here, as at Tanis, the colours are practically the same as those found in the Eighteenth Dynasty glass, with the addition only of the orange-yellow tint to which I have already referred. It is in the centre of these wooden plaques that what are perhaps the largest pieces of Egyptian glass known to us are found. These are the scarabæi of opaque blue glass, at times so closely resembling lapis lazuli that their true nature has been in dispute. Even the white marblings and spots of the native stone are imitated; indeed, in one specimen in the collection of Mr. Hilton Price, the little grains of pyrites in the stone, so much admired by the ancients, have been imitated by paillettes of gold scattered in the paste. (Cf. the passage from Theophrastus quoted below, p. [35].)

[PLATE III]

1

2

3

ANCIENT EGYPTIAN GLASS
1. SCARAB OF GLASS PASTE IMITATING LAPIS LAZULI. TWENTY-SECOND DYNASTY
2. FLASK FOR COSMETICS, IN SHAPE OF COLUMN WITH PAPYRUS CAPITAL
3. PLAQUE OF “FUSED MOSAIC” FOR INLAY; FROM DENDERAH, PTOLEMAIC PERIOD

But the Egyptians made use also of other processes partaking of the nature both of inlay and mosaic. Taking advantage of the fact that pieces of glass when softened by heat adhere to one another—they are in fact in this condition as ‘sticky’ as partially melted sugar—they formed a mosaic of small rods of glass; these were heated to a plastic condition, and if desired drawn out to reduce the dimension of the design; when cold, transverse sections were cut, on each of which the pattern appeared. In other cases the design was excavated on the surface of the glass, the coloured paste pressed into the hollows when in a soft condition, and the whole plaque finally reheated so as to form a homogeneous mass. Some such process, at least, must have been adopted in the preparation of the large slabs, generally with a ground of deep blue glass, of which a fine series may be seen in the Egyptian department of the British Museum. Elaborate work of this kind dates for the most part from Ptolemaic and even Roman times. Similar processes we shall come across again, in the case of the millefiori glass and the inlaid wall-plates of the Romans.

It is but a comparatively small number of the little glass vases with chevron patterns in our collections that have come from Egypt; up to the present time, however, no trace of their manufacture has been found in any other country; and although we cannot attribute so early a date as the Eighteenth Dynasty of Egypt to any of the little glass jugs and amphoræ found in Greek and Etruscan tombs, this ‘Mediterranean’ glass is in every respect subsidiary to the Egyptian series.

Glass in the Mycenæan Age

It would, indeed, be quite beside the mark to make a separate division for the glass of the Greeks, who for one reason or another appear never to have found much attraction in the material. This would at least seem to have been the case in Greece itself during the great centuries of Greek art, for nearly all the specimens of glass that we have from tombs of that time have been brought from more or less outlying lands, from Southern Italy, Sardinia or Etruria, above all from the islands of Rhodes and Cyprus, where the older culture long survived, and where Phœnician and Egyptian influences were strong.

Such a statement, however, would not hold for the so-called Mycenæan Age. At that time glass was indeed a rare material brought by Phœnician merchants from Egypt, perhaps from Syria also. In some cases this imported glass may have been remelted and worked up again; it was certainly highly prized.[^[16]] Perhaps the most striking instance of the application of glass to decorative purposes in Greece itself at this period, is to be found in the famous frieze discovered by Schliemann in the vestibule of the men’s hall at Tiryns. The pattern, carved in low relief upon the alabaster slabs, was heightened by studs of blue glass fixed into these slabs at intervals. Some of the roundels of this glass, forming the centre of rosettes, are as much as three-quarters of an inch in diameter. We have the authority of Virchow for stating that this is a soda-lime glass, coloured by copper—an analysis showed no trace of cobalt. On the other hand, cobalt has been found by German chemists in beads of an otherwise similar composition from Mycenæ and from the bee-hive tombs of Attica.

Now the question has arisen: Is this glass inlay to be identified with the kyanos which, as Homer tells us, formed the frieze or cornice (θριγκός) round the bronze walls in the palace of Alkinoos? Helbig, writing before the discovery of the frieze at Tiryns, maintained that the poet’s kyanos was of a glassy nature. He tells us (Das Homerische Epos, pp. 79 seq., quoted in Schliemann’s Tiryns)—‘This kyanos must be identified not with blue steel, but with (1st) the later Σαπφειρός—lapis lazuli; (2nd) with the blue colour obtained by pulverising this stone, and finally with the artificial imitation of this stone or of ultramarine. The classical passage is in Theophrastus (On Stones, § 55). This author distinguishes between the natural αὐτοφυής and the artificial (σκευαστός) kyanos. That by the first lapis lazuli is intended appears from an another passage (§ 39), where the gold dust distinctive of the lapis lazuli is cited as the peculiarity of the natural kyanos.... Theophrastus continues—“There are three kinds of kyanos, the Egyptian, the Scythian, and the Cyprian. The best for the darker colour is the Egyptian, for the lighter, the Scythian. The Egyptian is artificially prepared, and those that write about the kings tell us which king first, to imitate natural kyanos, melted the prepared kyanos (Κυάνος χυτός), and they allege that, among other things, from Phœnicia came a tribute of kyanos, partly natural and partly burnt (τοῦ μὲν ἀπυροῦ τοῦ δὲ πεπυρωμένου).”’

Helbig goes on to identify the unfired kyanos with the copper ore of Cyprus—the blue carbonate which the Phœnicians brought to the Pharaohs, and which was the main source of copper for the Eastern Mediterranean.[^[17]]

At Mycenæ itself little glass has been found—some minute tubular beads, decomposed externally but with a core of blue glass (pronounced by Landerer to contain lead and cobalt), and a few beads of clear glass. In the bee-hive tombs of Attica, especially at Spata, were found a number of small objects of glass, cast, says M. Tsountas, in moulds of granite and basalt which have been discovered on the spot. Indeed in all these tombs, next to the beads, the commonest examples of glass are the little rosettes and plaques cast in a mould with a design in low relief; these rosettes are often pierced with holes and were probably sewn on to the dresses of the women. The surface, and sometimes the whole body, is decomposed, presenting a white silvery glimmer, and this appearance Landerer considers to be characteristic of the presence of lead in the glass. At Vaphio we hear of fragments of glass ‘goblets’ being found, decorated with spirals of black, chestnut, and yellow (Tsountas and Manatt, The Mycenæan Age, 1897). If these are to be identified with our chevron vases, it is, as far as I know, the only mention of their occurrence on the mainland of Greece at this time.

But it is from the Greco-Phœnician tombs of Cyprus and Rhodes that the greatest quantity of this primitive glass (chiefly in the form of unguentaria) has been obtained; again from Greco-Etruscan tombs in Tuscany, from what may be called Greco-Oscan tombs in Southern Italy, and even from Greco-Scythian tombs in Southern Russia—from, in fact, nearly all the lands visited by Phœnician traders. How widely spread was the acquaintance with these little vases we may infer from the imitations of the chevron pattern on coloured pottery found in Melos. A similar decoration has been found on Lydian pottery from tumuli near Sardis, and even, it is claimed, upon prehistoric pottery brought from the Nilghery Hills in Southern India.

These little vases now take characteristic Greek shapes. The columnar kohl-pots are replaced by alabastra, very similar in form. Even more common in later tombs are the little amphoræ, sometimes pointed at the base, at others ending in a rounded knob; a jug-shaped form like the Greek oinochoe is also common. In some cases—in specimens of Egyptian origin very frequently—the surface of the glass is entirely unchanged. But when the decay of the surface has once set in, we generally find that the decomposition has eaten deeply into the substance of the glass (see above, p. [16]). In such cases it often happens that the blue colour has been entirely removed, and the vase has assumed the appearance of a dull, whitish pottery.

I will now briefly mention a few abnormal types of decoration. On some little amphoræ from Southern Italy the chevrons are of a manganese purple on a white translucent ground—this colour appears never to be combined with the more frequent blues and yellows. I have already noted that the use of red is very rare; where it appears, the technique of the vase appears to be different—the surface has probably been ground or turned on a lathe. A beautiful alabastron in the Slade collection, with red ground decorated with turquoise and yellow chevrons, should be specially noticed. (See also Pl II, 2.)

How much these little vases were valued appears from the stands of gold (decorated with applied spirals of an early type) on which they were sometimes placed in the tombs. M. Reinach mentions some instances from Crimean tombs, where chevron vases of the usual type have been found attached by a fine chain of gold to the bracelet worn by the deceased (Tolstoi and Kondakof, Antiquités de la Russie Méridionale, 1891). The little bottles that we see in the hand of the recumbent effigy on Phœnician sarcophagi, are probably to be identified with our glass vases; we have an instance of this on the well-known female figure in the Palermo Museum (figured by Perrot and Chipiez and elsewhere).

Later Survivals of the Primitive Glass

There are in the British Museum some little glass amphoræ from Camirus and Ialysus in Rhodes, and others from Amathia and Salamis in Cyprus, on which the chevron bands are not incorporated into the glass base, but laid on the surface as in later enamelled ware. The chevrons in such cases cannot have been ‘dragged’ by the old ingenious plan; they must have been elaborately applied one by one. We may recognise probably in such cases the survival of an old method of decoration after the technical process by which it was produced had been lost. The glass itself, too, is of a late type—transparent and hastily formed. I think that the date of some of these ‘scamped’ chevron vases may be later than is generally thought.

The beads and other objects of verroterie from the Cyprian and Rhodian tombs differ much from those found in the Mycenæan sepulchres of Continental Greece. There are in the British Museum some large beads of perfectly clear glass from Ialysus in Rhodes[^[18]]; these are probably of Asiatic origin. We must also range with this ‘primitive’ glass the large beads—if beads they are to be called—in the form of satyr-like masks, so widely spread through Mediterranean lands ([Pl. XV.], 1), as well as those of irregular shape that so closely resemble the old ‘bull’s eye’ sweetmeats, built up of interlacing bands of various colours. Indeed the technique of the manufacture of these beads was probably very similar to that of those handmade ‘lollipops,’ for in spite of its lower fusing-point, and of its solubility in water, there are many points of resemblance between sugar in a state of semi-fusion and glass in a similar condition.[^[19]]

What little I have to say of the rare specimens of glass of a more advanced type found in Greek tombs, I will postpone to the next chapter.

The Primitive Glass of Western Asia

The civilisation of the inhabitants of the Euphrates valley reaches probably as far back as that of the Egyptians. Its influence has extended at various times from the Balkan peninsula to the borders of India, including Persia on the one hand, and on the other the kingdoms that grew up in Syria, and among the primitive races of Asia Minor. Now, if we are to judge by the contents of our museums, all these lands, at least up to the time of the conquest of Alexander, may be passed over as of no concern to the writer of a history of glass. If, however, we allow ourselves to be influenced by less material evidence, we shall find that a good case may be made out for the early existence of glass in these lands. But before discussing this evidence, I would impress upon the reader how much the survival of objects of glass depends upon the habit of burying in tombs, and their discovery upon the systematic exploration of these tombs. Compared with Egypt, how little has been accomplished in this way in these Western Asiatic countries!

I have already noticed the coincidence of the sudden development of the manufacture of glass in Egypt with the first close contact, at the period of the Eighteenth Dynasty, of the Egyptians with races already affected by Babylonian culture; and we must remember that the glass made within a few years of this first contact was never surpassed in later times. Nor must we overlook the classical tradition concerning the invention of glass handed down to us by Pliny and other writers. According to this tradition, glass was first made by Phœnician traders on the coast of Syria. Here, at any rate, the three great requisites for the manufacture were at hand—a pure silica in the convenient form of a white sand, alkali either from the ashes of marine plants or from adjacent salt deposits, and finally, an abundant supply of fuel. And yet, for the present, all that can be said is that we must associate all the early glass that has been found in other countries than Egypt with the trading peoples of the Eastern Mediterranean, whether Pelasgians, Carians, or Phœnicians. To a similar source we may refer the rare glass beads found in tombs of the bronze period in Western Europe, as well perhaps as the scanty specimens of glass that have come from Assyria and Persia. To these last we will now turn.

Of glass of undoubted Assyrian origin, by far the most important example known to us is the little barrel-shaped vase with stunted handles found so many years ago by the late Sir Henry Layard in the ruins of Kouyunjik. This little vessel, after many vicissitudes, has found its way into the British Museum. It is three and a quarter inches in height, and is formed of a glass that is perfectly white and nearly transparent; it still remains, indeed, our earliest example of such glass. The date is fixed to the latter part of the seventh century B.C., by an inscription cut in cuneiform characters containing the name of Sargon, together with his titles as king of Assyria; on it is also engraved the figure of a lion. Layard speaks of this vase as being shaped and hollowed on a turner’s lathe after being ‘blown in one solid piece’ (Nineveh and Babylon, 1853)—a curious expression for one who interested himself so much in the manufacture of glass! We may, perhaps, regard it as having been carved like an object of rock crystal out of a solid piece of glass. We know of nothing like it from Egypt, but then the Egyptians had no love for transparent, colourless materials; from an early time, as we have seen, they had covered their beads of rock crystal with a blue glaze (cf. p. [20]). Here I may add that the other specimens of glass discovered by Layard at Nineveh have no claim to so early a date. Among them, however, were two bowls of great interest, formed of a vetro di trina or ‘lace glass,’ with very fine meshes. These are now in the Assyrian Department of the British Museum. Some almost identical bowls from the late Greek tombs of Canosa, in Southern Italy, may be seen in the Glass-Room in the same Museum.

The Assyrians and the Babylonians before them were, we know, from an early date past masters in the manufacture of coloured glazes. The turquoise blue glaze of their pottery and wall tiles has been handed down in these lands apparently without a break, through Persian and Sassanian times to their later Arab masters. In the Louvre are some slabs of a translucent glass of a fine turquoise tint, about three inches square, and three-quarters of an inch in thickness, which were found in Babylonia, associated apparently with objects of great age. Such masses of glass paste were perhaps manufactured as articles of commerce to be employed afterwards in the preparation of glazes.[^[20]]

Apart from these examples, the glass brought from Western Asia is of the usual later Phœnician or Roman type—‘lachrymatories’ and bowls mostly of greenish glass. It is not till we come to Sassanian times that we can find any distinctive features, and the rare specimens dating from that period will best be treated in a later chapter along with the contemporary Byzantine glass. I may mention finally that there are one or two passages in our Greek classics that may point to the use of glass by the Persians in the fifth century B.C. For instance, among other hardships suffered by the Athenian embassy to the great king—so we are told ironically by Aristophanes in his Acharnians—they were forced to drink from vessels of gold and from cups of glass, or, may be, of rock crystal (ἐξ ὑαλίνων ἐκπωμάτων).

We know of no glass other than that of Roman type from the Bible lands, using that expression in the narrower sense, nor in the whole literature of the Hebrews is there, as far as I know, any definite reference to glass. The word Zechuchoth, which occurs in a passage of Job (xxviii. 17), is translated in the Vulgate by vitrum, but like the Greek ὕαλος, it may as well refer to rock crystal, or any other hard transparent substance. There is, however, a passage in Jeremiah (ii. 22) which is really of more interest to us. It begins, ‘For though thou wash thee with nitre and take thee much soap.’ From this passage we learn at least that the natron of the salt lakes was in early days applied to practical ends. This was one step to its application to the manufacture of glass. Since then the soap-boiler has often been the ally of the glass-maker.

I have thought it well to bring together these few facts and theories bearing upon the early knowledge and use of glass in Western Asia, for could its early existence in these lands be once definitely established, we should be better able to fill up a gap in our history, and it would perhaps be then possible to solve that obscure problem—When and where was the great step taken and the blowing-tube first made use of for the production of a vesicle or paraison of glass?

At the present day, in some of the villages around Hebron, glass is still made by very primitive processes. Thence come the many-coloured bangles of glass, dear to the Arab women of Palestine and Egypt; some of these have found their way into collections of Egyptian antiquities, so closely do they resemble the old wares. This glass is carried by Arab and Jewish pedlars as far, it is said, as the Soudan. Here, indeed, we have an industry that may well be regarded as a survival from very early days.[^[21]] On the other hand, some two thousand years ago, as we learn from the evidence of the tombs, blown glass of an advanced type, colourless and transparent, was a common article in daily use, not only on the Syrian coast, but at Nazareth and other Galilean towns (see below, [Chap. IV.]); and yet, as far as I know, there is not a single allusion to glass or glass-making in any of our four Gospels.[^[22]]

CHAPTER III
THE LATER GREEK GLASS AND THE MOULDED AND CAST GLASS OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE

So far, all the glass with which we have come in contact has belonged without exception to one family; small objects, generally brightly coloured—beads, ornaments of various kinds and shapes, and, above all, little vases decorated with chevron bands; all these things belong rather to what in a general way may be classed as jewellery, objects of personal decoration. Of the one essential application of glass, as we understand the term, we have not so far found a single undoubted example—its application, I mean, to vessels intended to hold wine or water. This was to come a little later, and to come with a rush, as it were; for by the first century of our era, glass had already taken a position at least as important as at any subsequent time in our history.

I am speaking of glass, of course, in the narrow sense of the word, especially as a receptacle for liquids, for wine in the first place. From this time onward this is the predominant service to which the material has been put, and, indeed, at no time was its relation to wine-drinking more intimate than among the Romans of the early empire.

It is certainly strange that in spite of our comparatively intimate acquaintance with the ways of life of the Greeks during the time that intervened between the conquests of Alexander and the period of their absorption in the Roman Empire, we should be in possession of no evidence, documentary or material, that would throw light on this, for us, most important of all questions: Where was it, and at what time, that the great discovery was made—the art of blowing glass? For it was thanks to this discovery that the material came for the first time to take an important place among the art products and even the industries of the day. This is a point that cannot be too often or too strongly impressed upon the reader.

The glass vessels of the ancients rarely bear any inscription, and there is little, as a rule, in the decoration that can give occupation to the antiquary. Classical glass has therefore been comparatively neglected, except when of superlative merit; the record of its provenance has generally been lost: in continental museums it has either found a back place on the shelves of the Greek and Roman collections, or it has been handed over en masse to other departments. We thus find crowded together in the same case delicately turned bowls from Greek tombs, cinerary urns from Gaul or Britain, and examples of the rudely carved and engraved glass of the third and fourth centuries.

Such little evidence as there is, especially a few passages in Roman writers, would point to Alexandria, above all other towns, as the principal home of the glass industry in the first centuries before our era. We know, however, of no find of blown glass in Egypt, previous to later Roman or Coptic times. The Ptolemaic glass found at Tanis and elsewhere differs, as we have seen, little from the old type; and even at what is probably a later period we have found the same old type of glass in use at Denderah for inlaying (see above, p. [32]). It was not the Egyptians themselves that favoured the new process—by them the new glass was doubtless rejected as something exotic and unholy. The Greeks, on the other hand, seem never to have taken any interest in the material—the ‘fused stone,’ as they called it, was at the best but a poor substitute for the native minerals that it imitated.

[PLATE IV]

1

2

3

1. FLASK WITH “PEACOCK” DESIGN
GRECO-ROMAN
2. BOWL, FINISHED ON LATHE, SHOWING IRIDESCENCE
GRECO-ROMAN
3. BOWL OF THIN GLASS, BLOWN INTO MOULD
ROMA

Perhaps after all there is an element of truth in the prevalent Roman tradition, and we should not be far wrong in giving the credit for the introduction of the new system of manufacture to the glass-makers of Sidon or of some other of the Phœnician coast towns.