Italian cities carried the art to the lagoons of Venice in the 5th
century, or whether it was learnt from the Greeks of Constantinople at a
much later date, has been a disputed question. It would appear not
improbable that the former was the case, for it must be remembered that
articles formed of glass were in the later days of Roman civilization in
constant daily use, and that the making of glass was carried on, not as
now in large establishments, but by artisans working on a small scale.
It seems certain that some knowledge of the art was preserved in France,
in Germany and in Spain, and it seems improbable that it should have
been lost in that archipelago, where the traditions of ancient
civilization must have been better preserved than in almost any other
place. In 523 Cassiodorus writes of the "innumerosa navigia" belonging
to Venice, and where trade is active there is always a probability that
manufactures will flourish. However this may be, the earliest positive
evidence of the existence at Venice of a worker in glass would seem to
be the mention of Petrus Flavianus, phiolarius, in the ducale of Vitale
Falier in the year 1090. In 1224 twenty-nine persons are mentioned as
friolari (i.e. phiolari), and in the same century "mariegole," or codes
of trade regulations, were drawn up (_Monografia della vetraria
Veneziana e Muranese_, p. 219). The manufacture had then no doubt
attained considerable proportions: in 1268 the glass-workers became an
incorporated body; in their processions they exhibited decanters,
scent-bottles and the like; in 1279 they made, among other things,
weights and measures. In the latter part of this century the
glass-houses were almost entirely transferred to Murano. Thenceforward
the manufacture continued to grow in importance; glass vessels were made
in large quantities, as well as glass for windows. The earliest example
which has as yet been described--a cup of blue glass, enamelled and
gilt--is, however, not earlier than about 1440. A good many other
examples have been preserved which may be assigned to the same century:
the earlier of these bear a resemblance in form to the vessels of silver
made in the west of Europe; in the later an imitation of classical forms
becomes apparent. Enamel and gilding were freely used, in imitation no
doubt of the much-admired vessels brought from Damascus. Dillon has
pointed out that the process of enamelling had probably been derived
from Syria, with which country Venice had considerable commercial
intercourse. Many of the ornamental processes which we admire in
Venetian glass were already in use in this century, as that of mille
fiori, and the beautiful kind of glass known as "vitro di trina" or lace
glass. An elaborate account of the processes of making the vitro di
trina and the vasi a reticelli (Plate I., fig. 7) is given in Bontemps's
_Guide du verrier_, pp. 602-612. Many of the examples of these processes
exhibit surprising skill and taste, and are among the most beautiful
objects produced at the Venetian furnaces. That peculiar kind of glass
usually called schmelz, an imperfect imitation of calcedony, was also
made at Venice in the 15th century. Avanturine glass, that in which
numerous small particles of copper are diffused through a transparent
yellowish or brownish mass, was not invented until about 1600.
The peculiar merits of the Venetian manufacture are the elegance of form
and the surprising lightness and thinness of the substance of the
vessels produced. The highest perfection with regard both to form and
decoration was reached in the 16th century; subsequently the Venetian
workmen somewhat abused their skill by giving extravagant forms to
vessels, making drinking glasses in the forms of ships, lions, birds,
whales and the like.
Besides the making of vessels of all kinds the factories of Murano had
for a long period almost an entire monopoly of two other branches of the
art--the making of mirrors and of beads. Attempts to make mirrors of
glass were made as early as A.D. 1317, but even in the 16th century
mirrors of steel were still in use. To make a really good mirror of
glass two things are required--a plate free from bubbles and striae, and
a method of applying a film of metal with a uniform bright surface free
from defects. The principle of applying metallic films to glass seems to
have been known to the Romans and even to the Egyptians, and is
mentioned by Alexander Neckam in the 12th century, but it would appear
that it was not until the 16th century that the process of "silvering"
mirrors by the use of an amalgam of tin and mercury had been perfected.
During the 16th and 17th centuries Venice exported a prodigious quantity
of mirrors, but France and England gradually acquired knowledge and
skill in the art, and in 1772 only one glass-house at Murano continued
to make mirrors.
The making of beads was probably practised at Venice from a very early
period, but the earliest documentary evidence bearing on the subject
does not appear to be of earlier date than the 14th century, when
prohibitions were directed against those who made of glass such objects
as were usually made of crystal or other hard stones. In the 16th
century it had become a trade of great importance, and about 1764
twenty-two furnaces were employed in the production of beads. Towards
the end of the same century from 600 to 1000 workmen were, it is stated,
employed on one branch of the art, that of ornamenting beads by the help
of the blow-pipe. A very great variety of patterns was produced; a
tariff of the year 1800 contains an enumeration of 562 species and a
vast number of sub-species.
The efforts made in France, Germany and England, in the 17th and 18th
centuries, to improve the manufacture of glass in those countries had a
very injurious effect on the industry of Murano. The invention of
colourless Bohemian glass brought in its train the practice of cutting
glass, a method of ornamentation for which Venetian glass, from its
thinness, was ill adapted. One remarkable man, Giuseppe Briati, exerted
himself, with much success, both in working in the old Venetian method
and also in imitating the new fashions invented in Bohemia. He was
especially successful in making vases and circular dishes of vitro di
trina; one of the latter in the Correr collection at Venice, believed to
have been made in his glass-house, measures 55 centimetres (nearly 23
in.) in diameter. The vases made by him are as elegant in form as the
best of the Cinquecento period, but may perhaps be distinguished by the
superior purity and brilliancy of the glass. He also made with great
taste and skill large lustres and mirrors with frames of glass
ornamented either in intaglio or with foliage of various colours. He
obtained a knowledge of the methods of working practised in Bohemia by
disguising himself as a porter, and thus worked for three years in a
Bohemian glass-house. In 1736 he obtained a patent at Venice to
manufacture glass in the Bohemian manner. He died in 1772.
The fall of the republic was accompanied by interruption of trade and
decay of manufacture, and in the last years of the 18th and beginning of
the 19th century the glass-making of Murano was at a very low ebb. In
the year 1838 Signor Bussolin revived several of the ancient processes
of glass-working, and this revival was carried on by C. Pietro Biguglia
in 1845, and by others, and later by Salviati, to whose successful
efforts the modern renaissance of Venetian art glass is principally due.
The fame of Venice in glass-making so completely eclipsed that of other
Italian cities that it is difficult to learn much respecting their
progress in the art. Hartshorne and Dillon have drawn attention to the
important part played by the little Ligurian town, Altare, as a centre
from which glass-workers migrated to all parts of Europe. It is said
that the glass industry was established at Altare, in the 11th century,
by French craftsmen. In the 14th century Muranese glass-workers settled
there and developed the industry. It appears that as early as 1295
furnaces had been established at Treviso, Vicenza, Padua, Mantua,
Ferrara, Ravenna and Bologna. In 1634 there were two glass-houses in
Rome and one in Florence; but whether any of these produced ornamented
vessels, or only articles of common use and window glass, would not
appear to have as yet been ascertained.
_Germany_--Glass-making in Germany during the Roman period seems to have
been carried on extensively in the neighbourhood of Cologne. The Cologne
museum contains many specimens of Roman glass, some of which are
remarkable for their cut decoration. The craft survived the downfall of
the Roman power, and a native industry was developed. This industry must
have won some reputation, for in 758 the abbot of Jarrow appealed to the
bishop of Mainz to send him a worker in glass. There are few records of
glass manufacture in Germany before the beginning of the 16th century.
The positions of the factories were determined by the supply of wood for
fuel, and subsequently, when the craft of glass-cutting was introduced,
by the accessibility of water-power. The vessels produced by the
16th-century glass-workers in Germany, Holland and the Low Countries are
closely allied in form and decoration. The glass is coloured (generally
green) and the decoration consists of glass threads and glass studs, or
prunts ("Nuppen"). The use of threads and prunts is illustrated by the
development of the "Roemer," so popular as a drinking-glass, and as a
feature in Dutch studies of still life. The "Igel," a squat tumbler
covered with prunts, gave rise to the "Krautstrunk," which is like the
"Igel," but longer and narrow-waisted. The "Roemer" itself consists of a
cup, a short waist studded with prunts and a foot. The foot at first was
formed by coiling a thread of glass round the base of the waist; but,
subsequently, an open glass cone was joined to the base of the waist,
and a glass thread was coiled upon the surface of the cone. The
"Passglas," another popular drinking-glass, is cylindrical in form and
marked with horizontal rings of glass, placed at regular intervals, to
indicate the quantity of liquor to be taken at a draught.
In the edition of 1581 of the _De re metallica_ by Georg Agricola, there
is a woodcut showing the interior of a German glass factory, and glass
vessels both finished and unfinished.
In 1428 a Muranese glass-worker set up a furnace in Vienna, and another
furnace was built in the same town by an Italian in 1486. In 1531 the
town council of Nuremberg granted a subsidy to attract teachers of
Venetian technique. Many specimens exist of German winged and enamelled
glasses of Venetian character. The Venetian influence, however, was
indirect rather than direct. The native glass-workers adopted the
process of enamelling, but applied it to a form of decoration
characteristically German. On tall, roomy, cylindrical glasses they
painted portraits of the emperor and electors of Germany, or the
imperial eagle bearing on its wings the arms of the states composing the
empire. The earliest-known example of these enamelled glasses bears the
date 1553. They were immensely popular and the fashion for them lasted
into the 18th century. Some of the later specimens have views of cities,
battle scenes and processions painted in grisaille.
A more important outcome, however, of Italian influence was the
production, in emulation of Venetian glass, of a glass made of refined
potash, lime and sand, which was more colourless than the material it
was intended to imitate. This colourless potash-lime glass has always
been known as Bohemian glass. It was well adapted for receiving cut and
engraved decoration, and in these processes the German craftsmen proved
themselves to be exceptionally skilful. At the end of the 16th century
Rudolph II. brought Italian rock-crystal cutters from Milan to take
control of the crystal and glass-cutting works he had established at
Prague. It was at Prague that Caspar Lehmann and Zachary Belzer learnt
the craft of cutting glass. George Schwanhart, a pupil of Caspar
Lehmann, started glass-cutting at Ratisbon, and about 1690 Stephen
Schmidt and Hermann Schwinger introduced the crafts of cutting and
engraving glass in Nuremberg. To the Germans must be credited the
discovery, or development, of colourless potash-lime glass, the
reintroduction of the crafts of cutting and engraving on glass, the
invention by H. Schwanhart of the process of etching on glass by means
of hydrofluoric acid, and the rediscovery by J. Kunkel, who was director
of the glass-houses at Potsdam in 1679, of the method of making
copper-ruby glass.
_Low Countries and the United Provinces._--The glass industry of the Low
Countries was chiefly influenced by Italy and Spain, whereas German
influence and technique predominated in the United Provinces. The
history of glass-making in the provinces is almost identical with that
of Germany. In the 17th and 18th centuries the processes of scratching,
engraving and etching were brought to great perfection.
The earliest record of glass-making in the Low Countries consists in an
account of payments made in 1453-1454 on behalf of Philip the Good of
Burgundy to "Gossiun de Vieuglise, Maitre Vorrier de Lille" for a glass
fountain and four glass plateaus. Schuermans has traced Italian
glass-workers to Antwerp, Liege, Brussels and Namur. Antwerp appears to
have been the headquarters of the Muranese, and Liege the headquarters
of the Altarists. Guicciardini in his description of the Netherlands, in
1563, mentions glass as among the chief articles of export to England.
In 1599 the privilege of making "Voires de cristal a la faschon Venise,"
was granted to Philippe de Gridolphi of Antwerp. In 1623 Anthony Miotti,
a Muranese, addressed a petition to Philip IV. of Spain for permission
to make glasses, vases and cups of fine crystal, equal to those of
Venice, but to be sold at one-third less than Venetian glasses. In 1642
Jean Savonetti "gentilhomme Verrier de Murano" obtained a patent for
making glass in Brussels. The Low Country glasses are closely copied
from Venetian models, but generally are heavier and less elegant. Owing
to the fashion of Dutch and Flemish painters introducing glass vases and
drinking-glasses into their paintings of still life, interiors and
scenes of conviviality, Holland and Belgium at the present day possess
more accurate records of the products of their ancient glass factories
than any other countries.
_Spain._--During the Roman occupation Pliny states that glass was made
"per Hispanias" (_Nat. Hist._ xxxvi. 26. 66). Traces of Roman glass
manufactories have been found in Valencia and Murcia, in the valleys
which run down to the coast of Catalonia, and near the mouth of the
Ebro. Little is known about the condition of glass-making in Spain
between the Roman period and the 13th century. In the 13th century the
craft of glass-making was practised by the Moors in Almeria, and was
probably a survival from Roman times. The system of decorating vases and
vessels by means of strands of glass trailed upon the surface in knots,
zigzags and trellis work, was adopted by the Moors and is characteristic
of Roman craftsmanship. Glass-making was continued at Pinar de la
Vidriera and at Al Castril de la Pena into the 17th century. The objects
produced show no sign of Venetian influence, but are distinctly Oriental
in form. Many of the vessels have four or as many as eight handles, and
are decorated with serrated ornamentation, and with the trailed strands
of glass already referred to. The glass is generally of a dark-green
colour.
Barcelona has a long record as a centre of the glass industry. In 1324 a
municipal edict was issued forbidding the erection of glass-furnaces
within the city. In 1455 the glass-makers of Barcelona were permitted to
form a gild. Jeronimo Paulo, writing in 1491, says that glass vessels of
various sorts were sent thence to many places, and even to Rome.
Marineus Siculus, writing early in the 16th century, says that the best
glass was made at Barcelona; and Gaspar Baneiros, in his
_Chronographia_, published in 1562, states that the glass made at
Barcelona was almost equal to that of Venice and that large quantities
were exported.
The author of the _Atlante espanol_, writing at the end of the 18th
century, says that excellent glass was still made at Barcelona on
Venetian models. The Italian influence was strongly felt in Spain, but
Spanish writers have given no precise information as to when it was
introduced or whence it came. Schuermans has, however, discovered the
names of more than twenty Italians who found their way into Spain, in
some cases by way of Flanders, either from Altare or from Venice. The
Spanish glass-makers were very successful in imitating the Venetian
style, and many specimens supposed to have originated from Murano are
really Spanish. In addition to the works at Barcelona, the works which
chiefly affected Venetian methods were those of Cadalso in the province
of Toledo, founded in the 16th century, and the works established in
1680 at San Martin de Valdeiglesias in Avila. There were also works at
Valdemaqueda and at Villafranca. In 1680 the works in Barcelona,
Valdemaqueda and Villafranca are named in a royal schedule giving the
prices at which glass was to be sold in Madrid. In 1772 important glass
works were established at Recuenco in the province of Cuenca, mainly to
supply Madrid. The royal glass manufactory of La Granja de San Ildefonso
was founded about 1725; in the first instance for the manufacture of
mirror plates, but subsequently for the production of vases and
table-ware in the French style. The objects produced are mostly of white
clear glass, cut, engraved and gilded. Engraved flowers, views and
devices are often combined with decorative cutting. Don Sigismundo Brun
is credited with the invention of permanent gilding fixed by heat.
Spanish glass is well represented in the Victoria and Albert Museum.
_France._--Pliny states that glass was made in Gaul, and there is reason
to believe that it was made in many parts of the country and on a
considerable scale. There were glass-making districts both in Normandy
and in Poitou.
Little information can be gathered concerning the glass industry between
the Roman period and the 14th century. It is recorded that in the 7th
century the abbot of Wearmouth in England obtained artificers in glass
from France; and there is a tradition that in the 11th century
glass-workers migrated from Normandy and Brittany and set up works at
Altare near Genoa.
In 1302 window glass, probably crown-glass, was made at Beza le Foret in
the department of the Eure. In 1416 these works were in the hands of
Robin and Leban Guichard, but passed subsequently to the Le Vaillants.
In 1338 Humbert, the dauphin, granted a part of the forest of Chamborant
to a glass-worker named Guionet on the condition that Guionet should
supply him with vessels of glass.
In 1466 the abbess of St Croix of Poitiers received a gross of glasses
from the glass-works of La Ferriere, for the privilege of gathering fern
for the manufacture of potash.
In France, as in other countries, efforts were made to introduce Italian
methods of glass-working. Schuermans in his researches discovered that
during the 15th and 16th centuries many glass-workers left Altare and
settled in France,--the Saroldi migrated to Poitou, the Ferri to
Provence, the Massari to Lorraine and the Bormioli to Normandy. In 1551
Henry II. of France established at St Germain en Laye an Italian named
Mutio; he was a native of Bologna, but of Altare origin. In 1598 Henry
IV. permitted two "gentil hommes verriers" from Mantua to settle at
Rouen in order to make "verres de cristal, verres doree emaul et autres
ouvrages qui se font en Venise."
France assimilated the craft of glass-making, and her craftsmen acquired
a wide reputation. Lorraine and Normandy appear to have been the most
important centres. To Lorraine belong the well-known names Hennezel, de
Thietry, du Thisac, de Houx; and to Normandy the names de Bongar, de
Cacqueray le Vaillant and de Brossard.
In the 17th century the manufacture of mirror glass became an important
branch of the industry. In 1665 a manufactory was established in the
Faubourg St Antoine in Paris, and another at Tour-la-Ville near
Cherbourg.
Louis Lucas de Nehou, who succeeded de Cacqueray at the works at
Tour-la-Ville, moved in 1675 to the works in Paris. Here, in 1688, in
conjunction with A. Thevart, he succeeded in perfecting the process of
casting plate-glass. Mirror plates previous to the invention had been
made from blown "sheet" glass, and were consequently very limited in
size. De Nehou's process of rolling molten glass poured on an iron table
rendered the manufacture of very large plates possible.
The Manufactoire Royale des Glaces was removed in 1693 to the Chateau de
St Gobain.
In the 18th century the manufacture of _vases de verre_ had become so
neglected that the Academy of Sciences in 1759 offered a prize for an
essay on the means by which the industry might be revived (Labarte,
_Histoire des arts industriels_).
The famous Baccarat works, for making crystal glass, were founded in
1818 by d'Artigues.
_English Glass._--The records of glass-making in England are exceedingly
meagre. There is reason to believe that during the Roman occupation the
craft was carried on in several parts of the country. Remains of a Roman
glass manufactory of considerable extent were discovered near the
Manchester Ship Canal at Warrington. Wherever the Romans settled glass
vessels and fragments of glass have been found. There is no evidence to
prove that the industry survived the withdrawal of the Roman garrison.
It is probable that the glass drinking-vessels, which have been found in
pre-Christian Anglo-Saxon tombs, were introduced from Germany. Some are
elaborate in design and bear witness to advanced technique of Roman
character. In 675 Benedict Biscop, abbot of Wearmouth, was obliged to
obtain glass-workers from France, and in 758 Cuthbert, abbot of Jarrow,
appealed to the bishop of Mainz to send him artisans to manufacture
"windows and vessels of glass, because the English were ignorant and
helpless." Except for the statement in Bede that the French artisans,
sent by Benedict Biscop, taught their craft to the English, there is at
present no evidence of glass having been made in England between the
Roman period and the 13th century. In some deeds relating to the parish
of Chiddingfold, in Surrey, of a date not later than 1230, a grant is
recorded of twenty acres of land to Lawrence "vitrearius," and in
another deed, of about 1280, the "ovenhusveld" is mentioned as a
boundary. This field has been identified, and pieces of crucible and
fragments of glass have been dug up. There is another deed, dated 1300,
which mentions one William "le verir" of Chiddingfold.
About 1350 considerable quantities of colourless flat glass were
supplied by John Alemayn of Chiddingfold for glazing the windows in St
George's chapel, Windsor, and in the chapel of St Stephen, Westminster.
The name Alemayn (Aleman) suggests a foreign origin. In 1380 John
Glasewryth, a Staffordshire glass-worker, came to work at Shuerewode,
Kirdford, and there made brode-glas and vessels for Joan, widow of John
Shertere.
There were two kinds of flat glass, known respectively as "brode-glas"
and "Normandy" glass. The former was made, as described by Theophilus,
from cylinders, which were split, reheated and flattened into square
sheets. It was known as Lorraine glass, and subsequently as "German
sheet" or sheet-glass. Normandy glass was made from glass circles or
disks. When, in after years, the process was perfected, the glass was
known as "crown" glass. In 1447 English flat glass is mentioned in the
contract for the windows of the Beauchamp chapel at Warwick, but
disparagingly, as the contractor binds himself not to use it. In 1486,
however, it is referred to in such a way as to suggest that it was
superior to "Dutch, Venice or Normandy glass." The industry does not
seem to have prospered, for when in 1567 an inquiry was made as to its
condition, it was ascertained that only small rough goods were being
made.
In the 16th century the fashion for using glass vessels of ornamental
character spread from Italy into France and England. Henry VIII. had a
large collection of glass drinking-vessels chiefly of Venetian
manufacture. The increasing demand for Venetian drinking-glasses
suggested the possibility of making similar glass in England, and
various attempts were made to introduce Venetian workmen and Venetian
methods of manufacture. In 1550 eight Muranese glass-blowers were
working in or near the Tower of London. They had left Murano owing to
slackness of trade, but had been recalled, and appealed to the Council
of Ten in Venice to be allowed to complete their contract in London.
Seven of these glass-workers left London in the following year, but one,
Josepho Casselari, remained and joined Thomas Cavato, a Dutchman. In
1574 Jacob Verzellini, a fugitive Venetian, residing in Antwerp,
obtained a patent for making drinking-glasses in London "such as are
made in Murano." He established works in Crutched Friars, and to him is
probably due the introduction of the use of soda-ash, made from seaweed
and seaside plants, in place of the crude potash made from fern and wood
ashes. His manufactory was burnt down in 1575, but was rebuilt. He
afterwards moved his works to Winchester House, Broad Street. There is a
small goblet (Pl. I., fig. 8) in the British Museum which is attributed
to Verzellini. It is Venetian in character, of a brownish tint, with two
white enamel rings round the body. It is decorated with diamond or
steel-point etching, and bears on one side the date 1586, and on the
opposite side the words "In God is al mi trust." Verzellini died in 1606
and was buried at Down in Kent. In 1592 the Broad Street works had been
taken over by Jerome Bowes. They afterwards passed into the hands of Sir
R. Mansel, and in 1618 James Howell, author of _Epistolae Ho-elianae_,
was acting as steward. The works continued in operation until 1641.
During excavations in Broad Street in 1874 many fragments of glass were
found; amongst them were part of a wine-glass, a square scent-bottle and
a wine-glass stem containing a spiral thread of white enamel.
A greater and more lasting influence on English glass-making came from
France and the Low Countries. In 1567 James Carre of Antwerp stated that
he had erected two glass-houses at "Fernefol" (Fernfold Wood in Sussex)
for Normandy and Lorraine glass for windows, and had brought over
workmen. From this period began the records in England of the great
glass-making families of Hennezel, de Thietry, du Thisac and du Houx
from Lorraine, and of de Bongar and de Cacqueray from Normandy. About
this time glass-works were established at Ewhurst and Alford in Surrey,
Loxwood, Kirdford, Wisborough and Petworth in Sussex, and Sevenoaks and
Penshurst in Kent. Beginning in Sussex, Surrey and Kent, where wood for
fuel was plentiful, the foreign glass-workers and their descendants
migrated from place to place, always driven by the fuel-hunger of their
furnaces. They gradually made their way into Hampshire, Wiltshire,
Gloucestershire, Staffordshire, Northumberland, Scotland and Ireland.
They can be traced by cullet heaps and broken-down furnaces, and by
their names, often mutilated, recorded in parish registers.
In 1610 a patent was granted to Sir W. Slingsby for burning coal in
furnaces, and coal appears to have been used in the Broad Street works.
In 1615 all patents for glass-making were revoked and a new patent
issued for making glass with coal as fuel, in the names of Mansel,
Zouch, Thelwall, Kellaway and Percival. To the last is credited the
first introduction of covered crucibles to protect the molten glass from
the products of burning coal.
Simultaneously with the issue of this patent the use of wood for melting
glass was prohibited, and it was made illegal to import glass from
abroad. About 1617 Sir R. Mansel, vice-admiral and treasurer of the
navy, acquired the sole rights of making glass in England. These rights
he retained for over thirty years.
During the protectorate all patent rights virtually lapsed, and mirrors
and drinking-glasses were once more imported from Venice. In 1663 the
duke of Buckingham, although unable to obtain a renewal of the monopoly
of glass-making, secured the prohibition of the importation of glass for
mirrors, coach plates, spectacles, tubes and lenses, and contributed to
the revival of the glass industry in all its branches. Evelyn notes in
his _Diary_ a visit in 1673 to the Italian glass-house at Greenwich,
"where glass was blown of finer metal than that of Murano," and a visit
in 1677 to the duke of Buckingham's glass-works, where they made huge
"vases of mettal as cleare, ponderous and thick as chrystal; also
looking-glasses far larger and better than any that came from Venice."
Some light is thrown on the condition of the industry at the end of the
17th century by the Houghton letters on the improvement of trade and
commerce, which appeared in 1696. A few of these letters deal with the
glass trade, and in one a list is given of the glass-works then in
operation. There were 88 glass factories in England which are thus
classified:
Bottles 39
Looking-glass plates 2
Crown and plate-glass 5
Window glass 15
Flint and ordinary glass 27
--
88
It is probable that the flint-glass of that date was very different from
the flint-glass of to-day. The term flint-glass is now understood to
mean a glass composed of the silicates of potash and lead. It is the
most brilliant and the most colourless of all glasses, and was
undoubtedly first perfected in England. Hartshorne has attributed its
discovery to a London merchant named Tilson, who in 1663 obtained a
patent for making "crystal glass." E. W. Hulme, however, who has
carefully investigated the subject, is of opinion that flint-glass in
its present form was introduced about 1730. The use of oxide of lead in
glass-making was no new thing; it had been used, mainly as a flux, both
by Romans and Venetians. The invention, if it may be regarded as one,
consisted in eliminating lime from the glass mixture, substituting
refined potash for soda, and using a very large proportion of lead
oxide. It is probable that flint-glass was not invented, but gradually
evolved, that potash-lead glasses were in use during the latter part of
the 17th century, but that the mixture was not perfected until the
middle of the following century.
The 18th century saw a great development in all branches of
glass-making. Collectors of glass are chiefly concerned with the
drinking-glasses which were produced in great profusion and adapted for
every description of beverage. The most noted are the glasses with stout
cylindrical legs (Plate I. fig. 9), containing spiral threads of air, or
of white or coloured enamel. To this type of glass belong many of the
Jacobite glasses which commemorate the old or the young Pretender.
In 1746 the industry was in a sufficiently prosperous condition to tempt
the government to impose an excise duty. The report of the commission of
excise, dealing with glass, published in 1835 is curious and interesting
reading. So burdensome was the duty and so vexatious were the
restrictions that it is a matter for wonder that the industry survived.
In this respect England was more fortunate than Ireland. Before 1825,
when the excise duty was introduced into Ireland, there were flourishing
glass-works in Belfast, Cork, Dublin and Waterford. By 1850 the Irish
glass industry had been practically destroyed. Injurious as the excise
duty undoubtedly was to the glass trade generally, and especially to the
flint-glass industry, it is possible that it may have helped to develop
the art of decorative glass-cutting. The duty on flint-glass was imposed
on the molten glass in the crucibles and on the unfinished goods. The
manufacturer had, therefore, a strong inducement to enhance by every
means in his power the selling value of his glass after it had escaped
the exciseman's clutches. He therefore employed the best available art
and skill in improving the craft of glass-cutting. It is the development
of this craft in connexion with the perfecting of flint-glass that makes
the 18th century the most important period in the history of English
glass-making. Glass-cutting was a craft imported from Germany, but the
English material so greatly surpassed Bohemian glass in brilliance that
the Bohemian cut-glass was eclipsed. Glass-cutting was carried on at
works in Birmingham, Bristol, Belfast, Cork, Dublin, Glasgow, London,
Newcastle, Stourbridge, Whittington and Waterford. The most important
centres of the craft were London, Bristol, Birmingham and Waterford (see
Plate I., fig. 10, for oval cut-glass Waterford bowl). The finest
specimens of cut-glass belong to the period between 1780 and 1810. Owing
to the sacrifice of form to prismatic brilliance, cut-glass gradually
lost its artistic value. Towards the middle of the 19th century it
became the fashion to regard all cut-glass as barbarous, and services of
even the best period were neglected and dispersed. At the present time
scarcely anything is known about the origin of the few specimens of
18th-century English cut-glass which have been preserved in public
collections. It is strange that so little interest has been taken in a
craft in which for some thirty years England surpassed all competitors,
creating a wave of fashion which influenced the glass industry
throughout the whole of Europe.
In the report of the Excise Commission a list is given of the glass
manufactories which paid the excise duty in 1833. There were 105
factories in England, 10 in Scotland and 10 in Ireland. In England the
chief centres of the industry were Bristol, Birmingham, London,
Manchester, Newcastle, Stourbridge and York. Plate-glass was made by
Messrs Cookson of Newcastle, and by the British Plate Glass Company of
Ravenhead. Crown and German sheet-glass were made by Messrs Chance &
Hartley of Birmingham. The London glass-works were those of Apsley
Pellatt of Blackfriars, Christie of Stangate, and William Holmes of
Whitefriars. In Scotland there were works in Glasgow, Leith and
Portobello. In Ireland there were works in Belfast, Cork, Dublin and
Waterford. The famous Waterford works were in the hands of Gatchell &
Co.
_India._--Pliny states (_Nat. Hist._ xxxvi. 26, 66) that no glass was to
be compared to the Indian, and gives as a reason that it was made from
broken crystal; and in another passage (xii. 19, 42) he says that the
Troglodytes brought to Ocelis (Ghella near Bab-el-Mandeb) objects of
glass. We have, however, very little knowledge of Indian glass of any
considerable antiquity. A few small vessels have been found in the
"topes," as in that at Manikiala in the Punjab, which probably dates
from about the Christian era; but they exhibit no remarkable character,
and fragments found at Brahmanabad are hardly distinguishable from Roman
glass of the imperial period. The chronicle of the Sinhalese kings, the
_Mahavamsa_, however, asserts that mirrors of glittering glass were
carried in procession in 306 B.C., and beads like gems, and windows with
ornaments like jewels, are also mentioned at about the same date. If
there really was an important manufacture of glass in Ceylon at this
early time, that island perhaps furnished the Indian glass of Pliny. In
the later part of the 17th century some glass decorated with enamel was
made at Delhi. A specimen is in the Indian section of the South
Kensington Museum. Glass is made in several parts of India--as Patna and
Mysore--by very simple and primitive methods, and the results are
correspondingly defective. Black, green, red, blue and yellow glasses
are made, which contain a large proportion of alkali and are readily
fusible. The greater part is worked into bangles, but some small bottles
are blown (Buchanan, _Journey through Mysore_, i. 147, iii. 369).
_Persia._--No very remarkable specimens of Persian glass are known in
Europe, with the exception of some vessels of blue glass richly
decorated with gold. These probably date from the 17th century, for
Chardin tells us that the windows of the tomb of Shah Abbas II. (ob.
1666), at Kum, were "de cristal peint d'or et d'azur." At the present
day bottles and drinking-vessels are made in Persia which in texture and
quality differ little from ordinary Venetian glass of the 16th or 17th
centuries, while in form they exactly resemble those which may be seen
in the engravings in Chardin's _Travels_.
_China._--The history of the manufacture of glass in China is obscure,
but the common opinion that it was learnt from the Europeans in the 17th
century seems to be erroneous. A writer in the _Memoires concernant les
Chinois_ (ii. 46) states on the authority of the annals of the Han
dynasty that the emperor Wu-ti (140 B.C.) had a manufactory of the kind
of glass called "lieou-li" (probably a form of opaque glass), that in
the beginning of the 3rd century of our era the emperor Tsaou-tsaou
received from the West a considerable present of glasses of all colours,
and that soon after a glass-maker came into the country who taught the
art to the natives.
The Wei dynasty, to which Tsaou-tsaou belonged, reigned in northern
China, and at this day a considerable manufacture of glass is carried on
at Po-shan-hien in Shantung, which it would seem has existed for a long
period. The Rev. A. Williamson (_Journeys in North China_, i. 131) says
that the glass is extremely pure, and is made from the rocks in the
neighbourhood. The rocks are probably of quartz, i.e. rock crystal, a
correspondence with Pliny's statement respecting Indian glass which
seems deserving of attention.
Whether the making of glass in China was an original discovery of that
ingenious people, or was derived via Ceylon from Egypt, cannot perhaps
be now ascertained; the manufacture has, however, never greatly extended
itself in China. The case has been the converse of that of the Romans;
the latter had no fine pottery, and therefore employed glass as the
material for vessels of an ornamental kind, for table services and the
like. The Chinese, on the contrary, having from an early period had
excellent porcelain, have been careless about the manufacture of glass.
A Chinese writer, however, mentions the manufacture of a huge vase in
A.D. 627, and in 1154 Edrisi (first climate, tenth section) mentions
Chinese glass. A glass vase about a foot high is preserved at Nara in
Japan, and is alleged to have been placed there in the 8th century. It
seems probable that this is of Chinese manufacture. A writer in the
_Memoires concernant les Chinois_ (ii. 463 and 477), writing about 1770,
says that there was then a glass-house at Peking, where every year a
good number of vases were made, some requiring great labour because
nothing was blown (rien n'est souffle), meaning no doubt that the
ornamentation was produced not by blowing and moulding, but by cutting.
This factory was, however, merely an appendage to the imperial
magnificence. The earliest articles of Chinese glass the date of which
has been ascertained, which have been noticed, are some bearing the name
of the emperor Kienlung (1735-1795), one of which is in the Victoria and
Albert Museum.
In the manufacture of ornamental glass the leading idea in China seems
to be the imitation of natural stones. The coloured glass is usually not
of one bright colour throughout, but semi-transparent and marbled; the
colours in many instances are singularly fine and harmonious. As in
1770, carving or cutting is the chief method by which ornament is
produced, the vessels being blown very solid.
BIBLIOGRAPHY.--Georg Agricola, _De re metallica_ (Basel, 1556); Percy
Bate, _English Table Glass_ (n.d.); G. Bontemps, _Guide du verrier_
(Paris, 1868); Edward Dillon, _Glass_ (London, 1907); C. C. Edgar,
"Graeco-Egyptian Glass," _Catalogue du Musee du Caire_ (1905); Sir A.
W. Franks, _Guide to Glass Room in British Museum_ (1888); Rev. A.
Hallen, "Glass-making in Sussex," _Scottish Antiquary_, No. 28 (1893);
Albert Hartshorne, _Old English Glasses_ (London); E. W. Hulme,
"English Glass-making in XVI. and XVII. Centuries," _The Antiquary_,
Nos. 59, 60, 63, 64, 65; Alexander Nesbitt, "Glass," _Art Handbook_,
Victoria and Albert Museum; E. Peligot, _Le Verre, son histoire, sa
fabrication_ (Paris, 1878); Apsley Pellatt, _Curiosities of
Glass-making_ (London, 1849); F. Petrie, _Tell-el-Amarna_, Egypt
Exploration Fund (1894); "Egypt," sect. _Art_; H. J. Powell, "Cut
Glass," _Journal Society of Arts_, No. 2795; C. H. Read, "Saracenic
Glass," _Archaeologia_, vol. 58, part 1.; Juan F. Riano, "Spanish
Arts," _Art Handbook_, Victoria and Albert Museum; H. Schuermans,
"Muranese and Altarist Glass Workers," eleven letters: _Bulletins des
commissions royales_ (Brussels, 1883, 1891). For the United States,
see vol. x. of _Reports of the 12th Census_, pp. 949-1000, and
_Special Report of Census of Manufactures_ (1905), Part III., pp.
837-935. (A. Ne.; H. J. P.)
GLASS, STAINED. All coloured glass is, strictly speaking, "stained" by
some metallic oxide added to it in the process of manufacture. But the
term "stained glass" is popularly, as well as technically, used in a
more limited sense, and is understood to refer to stained glass windows.
Still the words "stained glass" do not fully describe what is meant; for
the glass in coloured windows is for the most part not only stained but
painted. Such painting was, however, until comparatively modern times,
used only to give details of drawing and to define _form_. The _colour_
in a stained glass window was not painted on the glass but incorporated
in it, mixed with it in the making--whence the term "pot-metal" by which
self-coloured glass is known, i.e. glass coloured in the melting pot.
A medieval window was consequently a patchwork of variously coloured
pieces. And the earlier its date the more surely was it a mosaic, not in
the form of tesserae, but in the manner known as "opus sectile." Shaped
pieces of coloured glass were, that is to say, put together like the
parts of a puzzle. The nearest approach to an exception to this rule is
a fragment at the Victoria and Albert Museum, in which actual tesserae
are fused together into a solid slab of many-coloured glass, in effect a
window panel, through which the light shines with all the brilliancy of
an Early Gothic window. But apart from the fact that the design proves
in this case to be even more effective with the light upon it, the use
of gold leaf in the tesserae confirms the presumption that this work,
which (supposing it to be genuine) would be Byzantine, centuries earlier
than any coloured windows that we know of, and entirely different from
them in technique, is rather a specimen of fused mosaic that happens to
be translucent than part of a window designedly executed in tesserae.
The Eastern (and possibly the earlier) practice was to set chips of
coloured glass in a heavy fretwork of stone or to imbed them in plaster.
In a medieval window they were held together by strips of lead, in
section something like the letter H, the upright strokes of which
represent the "tapes" extending on either side well over the edges of
the glass, and the crossbar the connecting "core" between them. The
leading was soldered together at the points of junction, cement or putty
was rubbed into the crevices between glass and lead, and the window was
attached (by means of copper wires soldered on to the leads) to iron
saddle-bars let into the masonry.
Stained glass was primarily the art of the glazier; but the painter,
called in to help, asserted himself more and more, and eventually took
it almost entirely into his own hands. Between the period when it was
glazier's work eked out by painting and when it was painter's work with
the aid of the glazier lies the entire development of stained and
painted window-making. With the eventual endeavour of the glass painter
to do without the glazier, and to get the colour by painting in
translucent _enamel_ upon colourless glass, we have the beginning of a
form of art no longer monumental and comparatively trivial.
This evolution of the painted window from a patchwork of little pieces
of coloured glass explains itself when it is remembered that coloured
glass was originally not made in the big sheets produced nowadays, but
at first in jewels to look as much as possible like rubies, sapphires,
emeralds and other precious stones, and afterwards in rounds and sheets
of small dimensions. Though some of the earliest windows were in the
form of pure glazing ("leaded-lights"), the addition of painting seems
to have been customary from the very first. It was a means of rendering
detail not to be got in lead. Glazing affords by itself scope for
beautiful pattern work; but the old glaziers never carried their art as
far as they might have done in the direction of ornament; their aim was
always in the direction of picture; the idea was to make windows serve
the purpose of coloured story books. That was beyond the art of the
glazier. It was easy enough to represent the drapery of a saint by red
glass, the ground on which he stood by green, the sky above by blue, his
crown by yellow, the scroll in his hand by white, and his flesh by
brownish pink; but when it came to showing the folds of red drapery,
blades of green grass, details of goldsmith's work, lettering on the
scroll, the features of the face--the only possible way of doing it was
by painting. The use of paint was confined at first to an opaque brown,
used, not as colour, but only as a means of stopping out light, and in
that way defining comparatively delicate details within the lead lines.
These themselves outlined and defined the main forms of the design. The
pigment used by the glass painter was of course vitreous: it consisted
of powdered glass and sundry metallic oxides (copper, iron, manganese,
&c.), so that, when the pieces of painted glass were made red hot in the
kiln, the powdered glass became fused to the surface, and with it the
dense colouring matter also. When the pieces of painted glass were
afterwards glazed together and seen against the light, the design
appeared in the brilliant colour of the glass, its forms drawn in the
uniform black into which, at a little distance, leadwork and painting
lines became merged.
It needed solid painting to stop out the light entirely: thin paint only
obscured it. And, even in early glass, thin paint was used, whether to
subdue crude colour or to indicate what little shading a 13th-century
draughtsman might desire. In the present state of old glass, the surface
often quite disintegrated, it is difficult to determine to what extent
thin paint was used for either purpose. There must always have been the
temptation to make tint do instead of solid lines; but the more
workmanlike practice, and the usual one, was to get difference of tint,
as a pen-draughtsman does, by lines of solid opaque colour. In
comparatively colourless glass (_grisaille_) the pattern was often made
to stand out by cross-hatching the background; and another common
practice was to coat the glass with paint all over, and scrape the
design out of it. The effect of either proceeding was to lower the tone
of the glass without dirtying the colour, as a smear of thin paint would
do.
Towards the 14th century, when Gothic design took a more naturalistic
direction, the desire to get something like modelling made it necessary
to carry painting farther, and they got rid to some extent of the ill
effect of shading-colour smeared on the glass by stippling it. This not
only softened the tint and allowed of gradation according to the amount
of stippling, but let some light through, where the bristles of the
stippling-tool took up the pigment. Shading of this kind enforced by
touches of strong brushwork, cross-hatching and some scratching out of
high lights was the method of glass painting adopted in the 14th
century.
Glass was never at the best a pleasant surface to paint on; and glass
painting, following the line of least resistance, developed in the later
Gothic and early Renaissance periods into something unlike any other
form of painting. The outlines continued to be traced upon the glass and
fixed in the fire; but, after that, the process of painting consisted
mainly in the removal of paint. The entire surface of the glass was
coated with an even "matt" of pale brown; this was allowed to dry; and
then the high lights were rubbed off, and the modelling was got by
scrubbing away the paint with a dry hog-hair brush, more or less,
according to the gradations required. Perfect modelling was got by
repeating the operation--how often depended upon the dexterity of the
painter. A painter's method is partly the outcome of his individuality.
One man would float on his colour and manipulate it to some extent in
the moist state; another would work entirely upon the dry matt. Great
use was made of the pointed stick with which sharp lines of light were
easily scraped out; and in the 16th century Swiss glass painters,
working upon a relatively small scale, got their modelling entirely with
a needle-point, scraping away the paint just as an etcher scratches away
the varnish from his etching plate. The practice of the two craftsmen
is, indeed, identical, though the one scratches out what are to be black
lines and the other lines of light. In the end, then, though a painter
would always use touches of the brush to get crisp lines of dark, the
manipulation of glass painting consisted more in erasing lights than in
painting shadows, more in rubbing out or scraping off paint than in
putting it on in brush strokes.
So far there was no thought of getting colour by means of paint. The
colour was in the glass itself, permeating the mass ("pot-metal"). There
was only one exception to this--ruby glass, the colour of which was so
dense that red glass thick enough for its purpose would have been
practically obscure; and so they made a colourless pot-metal coated on
one side only with red glass. This led to a practice which forms an
exception to the rule that in "pot-metal" glass every change of colour,
or from colour to white, is got by the use of a separate piece of glass.
It was possible in the ease of this "flashed" ruby to grind away
portions of the surface and thus obtain white on red or red on white.
Eventually they made coated glass of blue and other colours, with a view
to producing similar effects by abrasion. (The same result is arrived at
nowadays by means of etching. The skin of coloured glass, in old days
laboriously ground or cut away, is now easily eaten off by fluoric
acid.) One other exceptional expedient in colouring had very
considerable effect upon the development of glass design from about the
beginning of the 14th century. The discovery that a solution of silver
applied to glass would under the action of the fire stain it yellow
enabled the glass painter to get yellow upon colourless glass, green
upon grey-blue, and (by staining only the abraded portions) yellow upon
blue or ruby. This yellow was neither enamel nor pot-metal colour, but
stain--the only staining actually done by the glass painter as distinct
from the glass maker. It varied in colour from pale lemon to deep
orange, and was singularly pure in quality. As what is called "white"
glass became purer and was employed in greater quantities it was
lavishly used; so much so that a brilliant effect of silvery white and
golden yellow is characteristic of later Gothic windows.
The last stage of glass painting was the employment of enamel not for
stopping out light but to get colour. It began to be used in the early
part of the 16th century--at first only in the form of a flesh tint; but
it was not long before other colours were introduced. This use of colour
no longer _in_ the glass but _upon_ it marks quite a new departure in
technique. Enamel colour was finely powdered coloured glass mixed with
gum or some such substance into a pigment which could be applied with a
brush. When the glass painted with it was brought to a red heat in the
oven, the powdered glass melted and was fused to it, just like the
opaque brown employed from the very beginning of glass-painting.
This process of enamelling was hardly called for in the interests of
art. Even the red flesh-colour (borrowed from the Limoges enamellers
upon copper) did not in the least give the quality of flesh, though it
enabled the painter to suggest by contrast the whiteness of a man's
beard. As for the brighter enamel colours, they had nothing like the
depth or richness of "stained" glass. What enamel really did was to make
easy much that had been impossible in mosaic, as, for example, to
represent upon the very smallest shield of arms any number of "charges"
all in the correct tinctures. It encouraged the minute workmanship
characteristic of Swiss glass painting; and, though this was not
altogether inappropriate to domestic window panes, the painter was
tempted by it to depart from the simplicity and breadth of design
inseparable from the earlier mosaic practice. In the end he introduced
coloured glass only where he could hardly help it, and glazed the great
part of his window in rectangular panes of clear glass, upon which he
preferred to paint his picture in opaque brown and translucent enamel
colours.
Enamel upon glass has not stood the test of time. Its presence is
usually to be detected in old windows by specks of light shining through
the colour. This is where the enamel has crumbled off. There is a very
good reason for that. Enamel must melt at a temperature at which the
glass it is painted on keeps its shape. The lower the melting point of
the powdered glass the more easily it is fused. The painter is
consequently inclined to use enamel of which the contraction and
expansion is much greater than that of his glass--with the result that,
under the action of the weather, the colour is apt to work itself free
and expose the bare white glass beneath. The only enamel which has held
its own is that of the Swiss glass-painters of the 16th and 17th
centuries. The domestic window panes they painted may not in all cases
have been tried by the sudden changes of atmosphere to which church
windows are subject; but credit must be given them for exceptionally
skilful and conscientious workmanship.
The story of stained glass is bound up with the history of architecture,
to which it was subsidiary, and of the church, which was its patron. Its
only possible course of development was in the wake of church building.
From its very inception it was Gothic and ecclesiastical. And, though it
survived the upheaval of the Renaissance and was turned to civil and
domestic use, it is to church windows that we must go to see what
stained glass really was--or is; for time has been kind to it. The charm
of medieval glass lies to a great extent in the material, and especially
in the inequality of it. Chemically impure and mechanically imperfect,
it was rarely crude in tint or even in texture. It shaded off from light
to dark according to its thickness; it was speckled with air bubbles; it
was streaked and clouded; and all these imperfections of manufacture
went to perfection of colour. And age has improved it: the want of
homogeneousness in the material has led to the disintegration of its
surface; soft particles in it have been dissolved away by the action of
the weather, and the surface, pitted like an oyster-shell, refracts the
light in a way which adds greatly to the effect; at the same time there
is roothold for the lichen which (like the curtains of black cobwebs)
veils and gives mystery to the colour. An appreciable part of the beauty
of old glass is the result of age and accident. In that respect no new
glass can compare with it. There is, however, no such thing as "the lost
secret" of glass-making. It is no secret that age mellows.
Stained and painted glass is commonly apportioned to its "period,"
Gothic or Renaissance, and further to the particular phase of the style
to which it belongs. C. Winston, who was the first to inquire thoroughly
into English glass, adopting T. Rickman's classification, divided Gothic
windows into Early English (to c. 1280), Decorated (to c. 1380) and
Perpendicular (to c. 1530). These dates will do. But the transition from
one phase of design to another is never so sudden, nor so easily
defined, as any table of dates would lead us to suppose. The old style
lingered in one district long after the new fashion was flourishing in
another. Besides, the English periods do not quite coincide with those
of other countries. France, Germany and the Low Countries count for much
in the history of stained glass; and in no two places was the pace of
progress quite the same. There was, for example, scarcely any
13th-century Gothic in Germany, where the "geometric" style, equivalent
to our Decorated, was preceded by the Romanesque period; in France the
Flamboyant took the place of our Perpendicular; and in Italy Gothic
never properly took root at all. All these considered, a rather rough
and ready division presents the least difficulty to the student of old
glass; and it will be found convenient to think of Gothic glass as (1)
Early, (2) Middle and (3) Late, and of the subsequent windows as (1)
Renaissance and (2) Late Renaissance. The three periods of Gothic
correspond approximately to the 13th, 14th and 15th centuries. The
limits of the two periods of the Renaissance are not so easily defined.
In the first part of the 16th century (in Italy long before that) the
Renaissance and Gothic periods overlapped; in the latter part of it,
glass painting was already on the decline; and in the 17th and 18th
centuries it sank to deeper depths of degradation.
The likeness of early windows to translucent enamel (which is also
glass) is obvious. The lines of lead glazing correspond absolutely to
the "cloisons" of Byzantine goldsmith's work. Moreover, the extreme
minuteness of the leading (not always either mechanically necessary or
architecturally desirable) suggests that the starting point of all this
gorgeous illumination was the idea of reproducing on a grandiose scale
the jewelled effect produced in small by cloisonne enamellers. In other
respects the earliest glass shows the influence of Byzantine tradition.
It is mainly according to the more or less Byzantine character of its
design and draughtsmanship that archaeologists ascribe certain remains
of old glass to the 12th or the 11th century. Apart from documentary or
direct historic evidence, it is not possible to determine the precise
date of any particular fragment. In the "restored" windows at St Denis
there are remnants of glass belonging to the year 1108. Elsewhere in
France (Reims, Anger, Le Mans, Chartres, &c.) there is to be found very
early glass, some of it probably not much later than the end of the 10th
century, which is the date confidently ascribed to certain windows at St
Remi (Reims) and at Tegernsee. The rarer the specimen the greater may be
its technical and antiquarian interest. But, even if we could be quite
sure of its date, there is not enough of this very early work, and it
does not sufficiently distinguish itself from what followed, to count
artistically for much. The glory of early glass belongs to the 13th
century.
The design of windows was influenced, of course, by the conditions of
the workshop, by the nature of glass, the difficulty of shaping it, the
way it could be painted, and the necessity of lead glazing. The place of
glass in the scheme of church decoration led to a certain severity in
the treatment of it. The growing desire to get more and more light into
the churches, and the consequent manufacture of purer and more
transparent glass, affected the glazier's colour scheme. For all that,
the fashion of a window was, _mutatis mutandis_, that of the painting,
carving, embroidery, goldsmith's work, enamel and other craftsmanship of
the period. The design of an ivory triptych is very much that of a
three-light window. There is a little enamelled shrine of German
workmanship in the Victoria and Albert Museum which might almost have
been designed for glass; and the famous painted ceiling at Hildesheim is
planned precisely on the lines of a medallion window of the 13th
century. By that time glass had fallen into ways of its own, and there
were already various types of design which we now recognize as
characteristic of the first great period, in some respects the greatest
of all.
Pre-eminently typical of the first period is the "medallion window."
Glaziers began by naively accepting the iron bars across the light as
the basis of their composition, and planned a window as a series of
panels, one above the other, between the horizontal crossbars and the
upright lines of the border round it. The next step was to mitigate the
extreme severity of this composition by the introduction of a circular
or other medallion within the square boundary lines. Eventually these
were abandoned altogether, the iron bars were shaped according to the
pattern, and there was evolved the "medallion window," in which the main
divisions of the design are emphasized by the strong bands of iron round
them. Medallions were invariably devoted to picturing scenes from Bible
history or from the lives of the saints, set forth in the simplest and
most straightforward manner, the figures all on one plane, and as far as
possible clear-cut against a sapphire-blue or ruby-red ground. Scenery
was not so much depicted as suggested. An arch or two did duty for
architecture, any scrap of foliated ornament for landscape. Simplicity
of silhouette was absolutely essential to the readableness of pictures
on the small scale allowed by the medallion. As it is, they are so
difficult to decipher, so confused and broken in effect, as to give rise
(the radiating shape of "rose windows" aiding) to the misconception that
the design of early glass is kaleidoscopic--which it is not. The
intervals between subject medallions were filled in England (Canterbury)
with scrollwork, in France (Chartres) more often with geometric diaper,
in which last sometimes the red and blue merge into an unpleasant
purple. Design on this small scale was obviously unsuited to distant
windows. Clerestory lights were occupied by figures, sometimes on a
gigantic scale, entirely occupying the window, except for the border and
perhaps the slightest pretence of a niche. This arrangement lent itself
to broad effects of colour. The drawing may be rude; at times the
figures are grotesque; but the general impression is one of mysterious
grandeur and solemnity.
The depth and intensity of colour in the windows so far described comes
chiefly from the quality of the glass, but partly also from the fact
that very little white or pale-coloured glass was used. It was not the
custom at this period to dilute the colour of a rich window with white.
If light was wanted they worked in white, enlivened, it might be, by
colour. Strictly speaking, 13th-century glass was never colourless, but
of a greenish tint, due to impurities in the sand, potash or other
ingredients; it was of a horny consistency, too; but it is convenient to
speak of all would-be-clear glass as "white." The greyish windows in
which it prevails are technically described as "in grisaille." There are
examples (Salisbury, Chalons, Bonlieu, Angers) of "plain glazing" in
grisaille, in which the lead lines make very ingenious and beautiful
pattern. In the more usual case of painted grisaille the lead lines
still formed the groundwork of the design, though supplemented by
foliated or other detail, boldly outlined in strong brown and emphasized
by a background of cross-hatching. French grisaille was frequently all
in white (Reims, St Jean-aux-Bois, Sens), English work was usually
enlivened by bands and bosses of colour (Salisbury); but the general
effect of the window was still grey and silvery, even though there might
be distributed about it (the "five sisters," York minster) a fair amount
of coloured glass. The use of grisaille is sufficiently accounted for by
considerations of economy and the desire to get light; but it was also
in some sort a protest (witness the Cistercian interdict of 1134)
against undue indulgence in the luxury of colour. At this stage of its
development it was confined strictly to patternwork; figure subjects
were always in colour. For all that, some of the most restful and
entirely satisfying work of the 13th century was in grisaille
(Salisbury, Chartres, Reims, &c.).
The second or Middle period of Gothic glass marks a stage between the
work of the Early Gothic artist who thought out his design as glazing,
and that of the later draughtsman who conceived it as something to be
painted. It represents to many the period of greatest interest--probably
because of its departure from the severity of Early work. It was the
period of more naturalistic design; and a touch of nature is more easily
appreciated than architectural fitness. Middle Gothic glass, halting as
it does between the relatively rude mosaic of early times and the
painter-like accomplishment of fully-developed glass painting, has not
the salient merits of either. In the matter of tone also it is
intermediate between the deep, rich, sober harmonies of Early windows
and the lighter, brighter, gayer colouring of later glass. Now for the
first time grisaille ornament and coloured figurework were introduced
into the same window. And this was done in a very judicious way, in
alternate bands of white and deep rich colour, binding together the long
lights into which windows were by this time divided (chapter-house, York
minster). A similar horizontal tendency of design is noticeable in
windows in which the figures are enshrined under canopies, henceforth a
feature in glass design. The pinnaclework falls into pronounced bands of
brassy yellow between the tiers of figures (nave, York minster) and
serves to correct the vertical lines of the masonry. Canopywork grew
sometimes to such dimensions as quite to overpower the figure it was
supposed to frame; but, then, the sense of scale was never a directing
factor in Decorated design. A more interesting form of ornament is to be
found in Germany, where it was a pleasing custom (Regensburg) to fill
windows with conventional foliage without figurework. There is abundance
of Middle Gothic glass in England (York, Wells, Ely, Oxford), but the
best of it, such as the great East window at Gloucester cathedral, has
features more characteristic of the 15th than of the 14th century.
The keynote of Late Gothic glass is brilliancy. It had a silvery
quality. The 15th century was the period of white glass, which
approached at last to colourlessness, and was employed in great
profusion. Canopywork, more universal than ever, was represented almost
entirely in white touched with yellow stain, but not in sufficient
quantities to impair its silveriness. Whatever the banality of the idea
of imitation stonework in glass, the effect of thus framing coloured
pictures in delicate white is admirable: at last we have white and
colour in perfect combination. Fifteenth-century figurework contains
usually a large proportion of white glass; flesh tint is represented by
white; there is white in the drapery; in short, there is always white
enough in the figures to connect them with the canopywork and make the
whole effect one. The preponderance of white will be better appreciated
when it is stated that very often not a fifth or sixth part of the glass
is coloured. It is no uncommon thing to find figures draped entirely in
white with only a little colour in the background; and figurework all in
grisaille upon a ground of white latticework is quite characteristic of
Perpendicular glass.
One of the most typical forms of Late English Gothic canopy is where
(York minster) its slender pinnacles fill the upper part of the window,
and its solid base frames a picture in small of some episode in the
history of the personage depicted as large as life above. A much less
satisfactory continental practice was to enrich only the lower half of
the window with stained glass and to make shift above (Munich) with
"roundels" of plain white glass, the German equivalent for diamond
latticework.
[Illustration: PLATE I.
I. EARLY GLAZING. From S. Serge, Angers, Grisaille, with colour
introduced in the small circles.