THE BLOWN GLASS OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE
It is after all in the development of the art of blowing glass that the
principal merit of the glass-workers, in the age immediately preceding
our era, is to be found. By this method the real capabilities of the
material, both practical and artistic, were first disclosed. The art
was probably first practised on the Phœnician coast, perhaps at Sidon,
not long after the time of Alexander. Beside the moulded flasks of
which I have spoken above, there are others of plain globular form,
with simple short necks, which we may perhaps look upon as among the
earliest work of the Phœnician glass-blowers. Some of these are little
more than spherical vesicles of the glass as it came from the
blowing-tube. With these are associated certain plain spheres of thin
glass of various colours, which may have been used as balls by
jugglers, as mentioned in a passage in one of Seneca’s letters. But the
balls of cool glass, mentioned by other writers, held in their hands by
ladies in summer, must surely have been solid, like the spheres of rock
crystal put to a similar use by the Japanese. The next step was to give
the bulb of glass a ‘kick’ at the base, and to prolong the neck; we
have then the type of the so-called lachrymatories, perhaps the
commonest and best known form of classical glass.
There is in the British Museum an important collection of blown glass
vessels which have been found in Syrian tombs. The actual _provenance_
is here, as indeed in the case of so many other finds of glass, very
difficult to ascertain. Some of the pieces are said to come from the
neighbourhood of Nazareth, but the majority were probably found nearer
to the coast, not far from Sidon and Tyre. The forms are on the whole
classical, but Oriental influences may be seen in some cases, as in the
double _unguentaria_ which resemble certain Egyptian kohl-pots (Plate
VII.). The apparent abundance of this Syrian glass, and the clear,
nearly colourless material, point to a time rather after than before
our era.
We know that soon after the middle of the first century, all the
various forms and applications that we associate with the blown glass
of the Romans were in general use in Italy. The proof of this lies in
the vast collection of ancient glass in the museum at Naples. There
were some years ago in this collection more than eight thousand pieces
of glass, and it is constantly being added to. By far the greater part
of this glass comes from Pompeii. Now that town was destroyed in the
year 79 A.D., and it had sixteen years previously suffered so seriously
from an earthquake that little glass can have survived; we are thus
able to fix within exceptionally narrow limits the date of most of the
glass discovered in the ruins. Apart from a few elaborate examples
extracted from the tombs—some of these may well be of an earlier
date—we find a vast series of vessels adapted to various domestic
purposes, but more especially to uses connected with the storing and
drinking of wine. These are for the most part made of a transparent and
often colourless blown glass. By this time, then, the art of the
glass-blower must have been fully developed in Southern Italy. The
Pompeian glass has been well preserved by the thick bed of dry ashes,
and has suffered little from surface decomposition.
[Illustration:
_PLATE VII_
SEPULCHRAL GLASS FROM THE SYRIAN COAST
FIRST CENTURY B.C. TO FIRST CENTURY A.D.]
From a few scattered references in Roman writers we can in a measure
trace the rapid change in the position of glass at Rome, say between
the latter days of the Republic and the end of the reign of Augustus.
Cicero mentions glass as an article of merchandise brought from Egypt,
together with paper and linen. Strabo, writing under the rule of
Augustus, says that at Rome every day new processes were invented for
colouring glass and for simplifying its manufacture, so that ‘a
successful imitation of crystal may now be made so cheaply that a
drinking-glass with its stand can be sold for a copper coin’ (xvi. 25).
It is not, however, from Italy, or even from Mediterranean lands, that
the greater part of the Roman glass in our collections comes, and this
is especially the case if we confine ourselves to the ‘hollow
ware’—the true blown glass with which we are at present concerned.
Already in Pliny’s time the new industry had spread to Spain and Gaul,
where, before long, favoured no doubt by the cheapness of the fuel and
of the raw materials, important centres of manufacture must have sprung
up. We learn from Strabo that not long before his time the Britons
obtained what little glass they used—this was confined, indeed, to
articles of _verroterie_—from the Continent. But though we have no
direct evidence on this point, there can be little doubt but that
glass-works were established at least by the second century in the
southern parts of England, and that, to give one example, the large
globular and quadrangular urns of greenish glass were made at
glass-works not far from the tombs in which they are found.
Indeed, the bulk of this northern glass is of a sepulchral character.
The large size and the graceful shapes of the well-known cinerary urns
argue a complete mastery of the technical processes, and point to works
on an extensive scale where large glass pots must have been in use.
These spherical urns owe their preservation for the most part to the
fact that they were enclosed in ‘coffins’ of lead or stone. The
somewhat prosaic and ungainly square bottles that often replace them
must have been blown into a mould of some kind.
Little or no trace of local influence can be found in the shapes or the
material of the glass made in the second, third, and fourth centuries
in Gaul, in Britain, or on the Rhine. In the Glass-Room in the British
Museum, the large vessels of blown glass are chiefly of Gallic origin;
the most important come from a collection made many years ago in the
south-east of France. They may be compared with the Roman glass found
in Britain exhibited in the Central Saloon. On the whole, these large
glass urns are characteristic of the northern and western provinces.
While they appear to be unknown in Greece and in the East, in the Roman
columbaria they form a very small proportion of the urns ranged in the
niches and along the shelves.
The gigantic cinerary urns from Kentish cemeteries are only rivalled in
size by some of the Pompeian glass at Naples. Among the glass from
cemeteries in Southern Britain in the British Museum are many jugs and
bottles of quaint and original form, and others which for grace and
purity of outline it would be difficult to rival elsewhere (Plate IX.).
Notice especially the handles, and above all the insertion of the lower
end of these handles into the side of the vessel. It is the neglect of
attention to this point that so often gives an impression of weakness
to the handles of modern ware, whether of pottery or of glass. But here
the ribbed handle terminates in spreading lines that clasp the flank of
the jug like the claws of a bird of prey; I do not know of any happier
or simpler application of the viscous material. At times the central
rib of the handle is prolonged into a wing-like flange descending
nearly to the base of the vase, or may be ending in a long trail of
glass worked by the _pucella_ into quills or teeth.
A greater variety of forms is naturally found in glass made for
domestic use than in specimens destined for the tomb. It is this
variety that gives a special interest to the collection at Naples. M.
Froehner has described nearly thirty different forms of glass vessels
(_Collection Charvet_, pp. 76-80), and has attempted to apply to each
of them the distinctive classical name, both Greek and Latin. But many
of these terms are rather names of Greek fictile ware than of Roman
glass, and as to the remainder, it is rather to the Byzantine
scholiasts of later times than to writers of a good period, where
allusions to glass are rare and vague, that resource has been had. The
richest mines for information of this kind are the works of Petronius
and Athenæus—this last author gives a list of a hundred varieties of
drinking-vessels. But in both cases it is of vessels of silver or of
pottery rather than of glass that the writer is generally thinking.
As a rule, the shapes and methods of decoration of Roman glass follow a
line of their own, dependent on the ‘habits’ of the material. It is,
however, easy to recognise forms derived from pottery, and even from
bronze, in any large collection of Roman glass. Just as the so-called
Samian ware is imitated in the moulded glass bowls, so we find that a
class of pottery, common in England, in which the soft clay has been
pressed in, perhaps with the fingers, to form on the sides vertical
trough-like depressions, has been closely imitated in blown glass—such
rounded depressions are easily given to the _paraison_ by means of a
blunt piece of wood. Again, the decoration of white slip, equally
common on Romano-British fictile ware, is imitated by means of ‘trailed
stringings’ on glass, if indeed in this case the imitation is not in
some measure the other way—from glass to pottery.
Perhaps the most characteristic decoration of the earlier transparent
glass is given by a series of parallel ribs. This ‘pillar moulding’ may
be formed on the surface in various ways—by stringings partly melted
on to the surface, or by the use of a mould at one period in the
development of the _paraison_. A graceful type of these little ribbed
or gadrooned bowls—amber coloured, or again white with blue ribs—has
been found over and over again in pre-Roman tombs on both sides of the
Alps; these bowls are often seen in the museums of Switzerland and
North Italy. Apart from beads and small objects of _verroterie_, they
appear to be the earliest articles of glass exported to the Celtic
tribes of these districts, but nothing is known as to their place of
origin. In other cases such ribs or stringings, bending round the body
in a more or less gentle spiral, form a very happy scheme of ornament.
The decoration by trailed stringings—necessarily a rapid process, by
which happy effects are sometimes attained almost by accident—may be
regarded as a genuinely vitreous process. It is often combined with
fringes and toothings impressed—on the margin of the handles above
all—by the rapid and skilful use of the pincers. The commonest, and
probably the oldest, application is as a more or less closely coiled
stringing round the neck of the bottle or jug; this is convenient for
handling, and gives the appearance at least of additional strength. The
stringings on the later forms tend to hang loose upon the surface,
sometimes taking the form of hastily written characters.[34]
The cords and threadings may often be of a different colour from the
vessel upon which they are applied—they may be reduced to knots or
mere drops applied here and there. In such cases we have an apparent
approach to decoration by enamel. But the form of ornament that we are
now dealing with is applied directly to the soft _paraison_ or to the
still unfinished vessel, and the glass of which the stringings are
formed is probably of the same composition as that on which it is
superimposed.
So of the splashed or mottled ware. We have here real splashes of a
liquid material applied to the _paraison_ while still on the
blowing-tube. When the neck was subsequently shaped, these circular
markings were drawn out into ellipsoid forms, showing that this part of
the vessel was made at a later period. It is instructive to compare
this result of the work of the blowing-tube with the patterns on the
millefiori bowls. In these latter patterns we find no trace of
subsequent distortion—a proof that the glass of which they form part
has never passed through the stage of a _paraison_ or vesicle.[35]
ENAMELLING ON GLASS
I now for the first time have to treat of the decoration of glass by
enamel painting. It may be as well here to explain that in a true
enamel, as the term is used in ceramic and vitreous art, the coloured
decoration is applied to the glassy surface (either glaze or glass
body) in the form of a pigment worked up with water or other liquid.
Such enamel paints are composed, in later times at least, of a base of
silicate of lead (the flux), coloured by various metallic oxides. It is
essential that these enamels should be more fusible than the body on
which they are painted, so that when subjected to the heat of the
muffle-fire they may be completely fused, while the glass or glaze on
which they rest is not more than superficially softened. Such enamel
decoration, whether on porcelain or on glass, may vary from a mere wash
of colour on the one hand, of which it is sometimes difficult to say
whether it has ever been subjected to the heat of the muffle-fire, to a
true vitreous covering on the other, where the various colours stand
out in relief like so many jewels.
I may say at once that the Romans, as far as we know, never attained to
any great success in this method of decoration. Its full development
was reserved for the Saracens of the thirteenth and fourteenth
centuries. This is indeed the one important advance made in the
artistic manipulation of glass since ‘the palmy days of Rome.’
Not but that the Romans, and probably to some extent the Phœnicians and
the Alexandrian Greeks before them, did not draw and paint upon their
glass; but if we may judge from the rare and fragmentary examples that
have survived, they were unable to obtain much decorative effect by
this means; again, the very poverty and the paint-like quality of such
enamels as they used, have doubtless in many cases led to their total
disappearance from the surface of the glass.[36] The painting on the
cup-like lids of the little bowls from Cyprus I have already mentioned.
On a few fragments of thin glass from Egypt, draped figures have been
painted in opaque colours. Perhaps the nearest approach to an effective
use of enamel colours may be seen on two little cups found in graves of
the fourth century at Varpelev, in Denmark. These Scandinavian tombs
have yielded many interesting pieces of glass, as well as some bronze
vessels—possibly booty brought home from marauding expeditions. The
designs on these cups (they are illustrated in the _Proceedings of the
Copenhagen Antiquarian Society_, 1861) are thus described by Mr.
Nesbitt: ‘On the larger one are a lion and a bull, on the lesser two
birds with grapes.... The colours are vitrified and slightly in
relief—green, blue, and brown may be distinguished.’ (_Slade
Catalogue_, p. xvi. See also some account of glass from these and other
Scandinavian tombs in Montelius and Reinach, _Les temps préhistoriques
en Suède_.)
But the most important and the best preserved example of enamelling on
glass is to be found in a small bowl, probably of the third or fourth
century, preserved in the treasury of St. Mark at Venice. To this
important collection I shall have more than once to return.[37] The
little bowl in question—something over three inches in height—is of a
translucent glass of a winy or purplish colour. The seven larger
medallions that surround the body are filled with mythological subjects
in a fairly good classical style; the pale buff-coloured figures on a
black ground imitate an onyx cameo. Each medallion is surrounded by a
circle of rosettes of brilliant colours—blue, red, purple, and white.
The angular spaces are filled by smaller medallions, each containing a
head, and the remaining ground is occupied by a tracery of gold.
According to the Canonico Passini, this decoration is in very slight
relief, and is executed in what can scarcely be regarded as a true
vitrified enamel. The bowl has been mounted at a later time in a light
setting of silver gilt with elegant winged handles. But what is more
curious, at some time previous to the addition of the mounting, a band
of white ornament, resembling cufic letters, but apparently illegible,
has been painted round the inside just below the rim, and again outside
the base. Much of this later ornament has been abraded, although the
original decoration is well preserved, and I think that this fact is an
argument in favour of the earlier work being after all of the nature of
a true enamel fixed by fire. I describe this bowl here as I cannot see
any trace of Byzantine influence in the purely classical medallions.[38]
Finally, on a few of the gilt catacomb glasses, of which I shall speak
shortly, a little coloured enamel is sparingly applied here and there,
especially in the draperies.
ENGRAVED AND SCULPTURED GLASS
There remains one large division of Roman glass which I have purposely
left to the last. In this are comprised the engraved and sculptured
pieces, the bulk of which belong to a late time; indeed we may pass
from work of this kind to glass that is purely Byzantine in character
without any violent transition. But to return for a moment to examples
taken from quite the other end of the series, we have seen that the
glass bowls that are associated with Alexandrian-Greek and early Roman
times are mostly finished by a cutting-tool on some kind of lathe. In
the case of the bowl of white glass from Canosa in the British Museum,
closely imitating in form the well-known _scyphos_ of the Greek potter,
the handles are apparently carved out of a solid mass (cf. p. 46); a
very similar bowl in the Charvet collection, said to have come from
Cumæ, is illustrated by Froehner. Still more interesting is the large
shallow bowl or dish of white glass in our national collection; this is
again from a tomb at Canosa. A ring of some twenty spurs, each about
half an inch in height, arises from the outer margin; these spurs are
carved apparently out of the solid glass. A large rosette cut in low
relief, representing a full-blown lotus flower, covers nearly the whole
of the surface. With this work we may compare the rosettes, much more
rudely carved, it is true, on the base of some very similar bowls of
late date from the Rhine country.
Of quite a different character is the carving on those earlier vessels
of which we may take the well-known Portland vase as a type. Here the
delicate sculpture in low relief takes us back to the cameos of the
Hellenistic Greeks, which, as we have seen, were often executed in a
glass paste. But few specimens of work of this kind have come down to
us—some half-dozen in all—and of these only two are perfect. The body
of these vases is formed by two or more superimposed layers of glass,
of which the outer one, generally of an opaque white, is ground away by
the wheel of the engraver, leaving a design in low relief upon a basis
of blue or other colour.
The most famous example of this class is, without doubt, the Barberini
or Portland vase, a two-handled urn found towards the end of the
sixteenth century in a marble sarcophagus at the Monte del Grano, a
lofty tumulus some three miles to the south-east of Rome. Whether the
tomb from which the urn was extracted was that of the Emperor Alexander
Severus, who was killed in the year 225, is not of much consequence,
for the vase itself is certainly of an earlier date. The figures in
this case stand out upon a dark blue ground—we need not dwell upon the
interpretation of the subject. As Wedgwood long ago pointed out, a rich
and almost pictorial effect is given by cutting down the white layer in
places nearly, but not quite, to the blue base which then shows through
a film of the slightly translucent white paste—an effect, by the way,
that is almost lost in the imitations of this vase made in the opaque
Wedgwood ware. A curious point about this vase is the fact that the
decoration is continued over the circular base on which it stands. This
medallion-like space is filled by the bust of a youth with a Phrygian
cap wrapped in voluminous drapery. There is some doubt, however,
whether this medallion is of so early a date as the rest of the
vase.[39]
Almost identical with the Portland vase in technique and material is
the amphora of onyx glass, carved as a cameo in low relief, which was
found in 1837 in a tomb on the Strada dei Sepolcri at Pompeii. In this
case we have a limit—a _terminus ad quem_—for the date, the middle,
that is to say, of the first century of our era. But the work may well
be of a somewhat earlier time than this. The decoration is distinctly
Alexandrian in character. Notice especially the band at the lower part
with the sheep feeding under trees—in this we are at once carried back
to the pastoral poetry of Sicily. It will be observed that the vintage
scenes with the little naked ‘putti’ are placed under the handles,
while the place of honour is reserved for the beautiful design of
vine-branches, masks, and birds. The highly developed technical skill
required, especially in the preliminary blowing and ‘casing’ of the
glass, is, however, an argument against throwing back too far the date
of vases of this class.
Some fragments of another vase of a similar character were found at
Pompeii at a later date; the pieces after passing through various hands
are now in the British Museum, where they have been united to form
(with extensive gaps) an _œnochoë_ or jug, known as the Auldjo vase,
from the former owner of most of the fragments; in this case the
decoration of the parts preserved consists chiefly of vine and ivy
leaves. There are at Naples many fragments of onyx glass equal in
beauty and skill of execution to these well-known vases. Among these,
the half of a patera decorated, on a dark blue ground, with a mask
surrounded by the leaves of the Oriental plane, is of exceptional
merit. In other cases the parts in relief seem to have been cast
separately and fixed on to the surface, a technical process of quite
another nature.
In all these examples the work of the artist follows closely on the
lines of the carver of cameos—especially of those cameos where
advantage is taken of the parallel layers of the natural stone, as in
the case of the sardonyx and of the niccolo; it is for this reason that
I have described the material of our Barberini and similar vases as
onyx glass. But there was another and purer variety of quartz that was
coming more and more into favour during the third and fourth centuries.
From this time onward all through the early Middle Ages, if we are to
judge from the treasures preserved in Christian churches, to nothing
was more value attached than to vases and cups of rock crystal, often
of imposing dimensions, carved in shallow or deep relief. When once the
process of making a clear colourless glass was mastered, this natural
crystal could be very closely imitated in a material which was more
easily worked. The carvings on the great majority of the examples of
rock crystal that have come down to us—for example, the vases in the
Louvre from the Abbey of St. Denis, and those still preserved in the
treasury of St. Mark’s—are of a distinctly Byzantine, if not rather of
a Sassanian or even Saracenic character, and this style is reflected
upon much of the ‘crystal’ glass which is so often confused with the
harder stone.[40]
The Romans of the fourth century were great masters of the art of
cutting hard stones. Along with a general decline in taste and artistic
invention, there was some advance in the direction of what we should
now call applied science, and this is exemplified in the nature of the
‘metal’ and in the method of carving of the later Roman glass.
In the case of this later engraved glass, the lapidary’s wheel was
applied at times to produce a rough design by a series of burr-like
marks, or again the pattern was built up of a number of shallow, mostly
oval depressions; in other examples the glass was deeply undercut, so
that the designs appear to float round the vessel, to which indeed they
are only attached by small rods not easily visible. Of the last kind is
the work that may conveniently be called _diatretum_, although it is by
no means certain that the _diatretarii_, mentioned by Ulpian and
others, were necessarily workers in glass, seeing that carvings of this
description, whether in metal, in hard stones, or in our material, were
equally in favour at this time.
We have, unfortunately, no complete example of this undercut work
easily accessible in our public collections. A fragment, however, in
the British Museum throws much light upon the process of manufacture.
On this piece there remains a portion of the outer frame in the form of
a few letters that have formed part of an inscription; most of these
letters, however, have been broken away, and we are thus enabled to see
the base of the rods that supported them. The sharp angles of these
little rods, and the marks on the surface of the glass, point
unmistakably to the use of a cutting-tool, nor is there, I think, any
trace of soldering at the base of the rods. We must turn again to the
marvellous collection of late classical and mediæval objects that has
been so long preserved in the treasury of St. Mark’s at Venice for the
most complete specimen of this undercut glass. Here will be found a
_situla_, or bucket-shaped vessel, of slightly greenish glass, about
eleven inches in height (Plate XIV.). On the upper zone is a hunting
scene with two horsemen, treated with a certain energy that calls to
mind some of the Byzantine and even Sassanian work of the fourth and
fifth centuries. Below we have a raised network, or rather grating—for
the motive seems to be taken from a grille of iron or bronze—formed of
four rows, each built up of fifteen tangential circles bound together
at the points of contact. About half of these circles are more or less
broken, and neither on the ground nor on the supporting rods thus
disclosed was I able on close examination to discover any of those
marks of a cutting-tool so prominent on the British Museum fragment.
Indeed it is very possible that this late example may be built up of
separately cast pieces soldered on to the base.
The famous cup of _diatretum_ glass found near Strassburg was destroyed
during the bombardment of that city in 1870; it bore an imperfect
inscription in raised letters, which has been interpreted as referring
to the Emperor Maximianus Herculius, the partner of Constantine in the
empire, who put an end to his life in 310. In this case a network of
red glass and an inscription of green glass were superimposed upon a
nearly colourless ground. So in another cup preserved in the Palazzo
Trivulzio at Milan, the inscription BIBE VIVAS MULTOS ANNOS is again in
green glass, but the network is here blue. Where the detached
decoration is of a different colour from the base, the original vase
must have been of an onyx glass formed by a ‘casing’ process and of
considerable thickness, unless, indeed, we are to regard the lettering
and the network in such cases as formed separately and attached to the
base by the little rods. Perhaps the finest example of a _vas
diatretum_ is the bowl found in a stone sarcophagus at Worms, of which
the fragments are now divided between the museums of Bonn and Mainz. In
the former museum may also be seen a tall amphora-shaped vase (some
twenty inches in height), with Bacchic scenes carved in low relief,
which was found in the same coffin.
[Illustration:
_PLATE VIII_
BOWL OF OLIVE-GREEN GLASS, ON METAL STAND
LATE ROMAN]
The oviform bowl belonging to Lord Rothschild is carved in an
olive-green glass, which appears of a deep red by transmitted light. It
is surrounded by five figures in what is practically complete relief;
the subject represented appears to be the ‘Madness of Lycurgus.’ The
arms and the draperies of these figures are connected to the base by
little rods as in the previous examples, but to judge from certain
cavities in the interior corresponding to the principal external
_bossages_, the glass was originally cast in a mould.[41]
The often-quoted expression of Martial, ‘_Surrentinæ leve toreumata
rotæ_,’ written before the end of the first century, can hardly refer
to this undercut work, which seems to be all of a much later date, nor
is it even certain that the words refer to objects carved in glass
rather than in rock crystal and agate. The word _toreumata_ is used in
connection with silver and even of earthenware. So the _calices_ and
_toreumata Nili_ of the same writer (xi. 12) seem from the context to
be rather carved in some precious stone. The following lines, however,
are headed ‘Calices Vitrei’:
‘Adspicis ingenium Nili, quibus addere plura
Dum cupit, ah quoties perdidit auctor opus!’
MARTIAL, xiv. 113.
In some other references to glass in Martial’s _Epigrams_ it is
mentioned as a cheap material, and contrasted with gold or rock crystal.
As a rule, however, this late Roman glass was cut in very low relief.
The design was often given by the juxtaposition of a number of ovoid
depressions and furrows scooped in a perfunctory fashion by means of a
lapidary’s wheel of some size.[42] At times this wheel was applied so
as to make a rough burr on the surface; on the other hand but little
use was made of the simple engraved line that we find on the German
glass of the seventeenth century.
The designs on this later engraved glass are almost without exception
of the most wretched description; any interest they may have is
archæological, and dependent upon the subject treated. Many pieces,
especially in the form of shallow bowls, have been found in tombs of
the third and fourth centuries in the Rhine district, especially around
Cologne. Some of these bear inscriptions in often very faulty Greek,
but I do not think that this is a reason for inferring that they are
not of local manufacture.[43] On one cup from Cologne the creation of
man by Prometheus is represented, but the majority of the subjects are
of a more or less Bacchanalian or even of an erotic character. It has
been attempted to connect these with the _tabernæ_, the roadside
inns—places of no good repute in those days—and even to find
representations of these hostelries in certain tall and evidently
secular buildings engraved on them.
Still more curious are the spherical ampullæ on which a panoramic
landscape is roughly scratched; in every case the scene represented is
the coast-line from the bay of Baiæ to Pozzuoli, the names of the
various temples and palaces being indicated by inscriptions. (See
Froehner, p. 96.)
Most of this engraved glass dates from a time when Christianity was
widely diffused, but we rarely find on it subjects connected with the
new religion. It would seem that the associations connected with the
glass thus decorated were not such as would recommend it for Christian
use. The early fathers protested against all such elaborate and vain
arts. ‘The pretentious and useless vainglory of the engravers on
vessels of glass may well cause those who use them to tremble, and such
work should be exterminated by our good institutions,’—so wrote
Clement of Alexandria early in the third century (quoted by M.
Gerspach, p. 49). There is little to say from the artistic side for the
few specimens of engraved Christian glass that have come down to us;
their aim is purely didactic and for edification.
The wheel was sometimes employed by the Romans to form a simple pattern
by means of a series of polished ovoid depressions; when these are
placed close together, the effect somewhat resembles that of our modern
facetted glass. The resemblance is still more close when the surface is
cut with a series of intersecting diagonal furrows, as on the spherical
bottle at South Kensington, illustrated by Mr. Nesbitt in his catalogue.
I have now run through the principal varieties of Roman glass, and the
order in which I have arranged the different classes—the inlaid and
millefiori first, then the moulded, the blown, and finally, the cut and
engraved glass—is in a measure a chronological one, following roughly
the order in which these various methods of working and styles of
decoration succeeded one another, or rather were dominant, in
successive ages. I will end this chapter with a few notes concerning
the methods of preparation and the geographical distribution of Roman
glass.
As far as contemporary evidence goes, all our information on the first
head is derived from the brief and very unsatisfactory statements of
Pliny. There is, however, every reason to believe that there were few
important changes in the construction of the furnaces, or in the
preparation of the materials, during the time that intervened between,
say, the fourth century of our era and the period in the Middle Ages
with regard to which we have further sources of information. That is to
say, we may regard the comparatively adequate account of the
manufacture of glass given by the monk Theophilus, and by the
pseudo-Heraclius,[44] as on the whole applicable to Roman times. Even
at the present day at Murano, and doubtless at other glass-works little
affected by modern industrial processes, much of the old method of
working and many of the old terms remain almost unchanged. To give but
one example:—when the workman is preparing the half-liquid gathering
or ball of glass at the end of his blowing-tube, previous to inflating
it with his breath to form the _paraison_ or vesicle, he trundles the
viscous mass upon a slab of iron which rests on the ground beside his
furnace. This iron slab is known as the ‘marver’—there are similar
names for it in other European languages—and it is always understood
that the plate in question was formerly made of marble. So, no doubt,
it may have been at some remote period, but we find that the
pseudo-Heraclius, describing in the twelfth century or thereabouts the
manufacture of glass, speaks of this same plate as ‘_tabula ferri quæ
marmor vocatur_.’ Perhaps we should have to go back to the stone slab
on which the Egyptian glass was rolled to find the origin of this
‘marver.’[45]
We must now see what can be made out of the somewhat rambling account
of the origin and manufacture of glass given by Pliny at the end of his
thirty-sixth book (cap. 44-47). Pliny regarded glass as a Syrian
invention. For many centuries, he tells us, the sole source of the
principal constituent was a small tract of sand thrown up by the sea at
a spot on the Phœnician coast near the town of Ptolemais, where the
river Belus[46] flows into the Mediterranean. With this sand the
natives mixed the _nitrum_, imported oversea in cakes,[47] and thereby
for the first time formed glass. According to Pliny, these Phœnicians
were astute and ingenious craftsmen, and they, in time, took to adding
to their glass-pots the ‘_magnes lapis_, which, it is asserted, draws
to it the melted glass like iron.’ This is a statement most
characteristic of Pliny. The _magnes lapis_—magnetic iron-ore or
loadstone—is the last substance in the world any one would think of
adding to glass. But we know that the ancients knew of two kinds of
black stone, for one of which they used the masculine form
_magnes_—this was the loadstone—for the other the female form
_magnesia_;[48] and this _magnesia_, at any rate at a somewhat later
period, can be undoubtedly identified with the black oxide of manganese
(_MnO_{2}_), a substance known of old as the ‘soap of glass,’ from its
power of removing the green colour derived from iron. Now we have seen
that pure white glass, ‘cleansed’ probably by this method, had only
comparatively lately been introduced into Italy, and some confused
account of the new discovery had probably reached Pliny’s ears. ‘In the
same way,’ he continues, ‘they took to adding to the fused mass shining
pebbles, then shells and sandy concretions (_fossiles arenæ_).’ In
these ‘fossils’ we may, perhaps, recognise the source from which was
obtained the lime, an essential constituent of glass. Passing over some
obscure references to the nitre of Ophir and the copper of Cyprus,
Pliny goes on to say that the whole is melted ‘like bronze,’ in closely
grouped furnaces, and that a blackish mass of fatty aspect is obtained.
This we must regard as a preliminary frit, for we are told that the
mass is melted again in the glass-house, where the requisite colouring
matter is added to it. ‘So the work was carried on of old in the famous
glass-works of Sidon.... At times the glass was shaped by blowing, or
again it was abraded by the wheel, or carved in the manner of
silver.... Such was the ancient way of making glass. At the present day
in Italy also, by the mouth of the river Vulturnus, for a space of six
miles between Cumæ and Liternum, a white and most soft sand is
collected, which is pounded both in mortar and mill; it is then mixed
with three parts of nitrum,[49] by weight or by measure, and after
melting is transferred to other furnaces. In these the substance, now
known as _ammonitrum_, is melted and then cast into cakes. These cakes
are again fused to obtain pure glass and cakes of white glass.’
Pliny, in this confused account, where we have apparently materials
from different sources imperfectly welded together, appears to contrast
an older method of manufacture, practised formerly at Sidon, whose
glass-works he seems to refer to as things of the past, with the newer
processes now in use in Italy. It will be noted that in both cases a
preliminary frit was prepared, although the term _ammonitrum_, a word
of Greek origin, is applied to this frit in the latter case only.
‘Already,’ says Pliny, ‘the new art of melting sand with soda
(literally “of tempering sand”) has spread through Gaul and Spain.’ He
then goes on to tell, but with an expression of incredulity quite
unusual with him, the story of the discovery of a malleable glass.
According to this tale (in its earliest form), Tiberius ordered the
workshop of the man who so tempered glass that it became flexible, to
be pulled down, lest the value of bronze, silver, and gold should be
depreciated. This story was the delight of the renaissance writers on
glass. With regard to the more amplified and tragic version usually
quoted from Petronius, we must remember that the remarks put by that
writer into the mouth of Trimalchio are not always to be taken
seriously. In later days a similar tale was told of a French
inventor—in this Richelieu takes the place of Tiberius. After
mentioning the _calices pteroti_, the costly ‘winged cups’ of Nero,
Pliny gives some account (quite out of its proper place, by the way) of
obsidian, a black stone much resembling glass, which was shaped not
only into various dishes for use at the table, but also into figures of
some size—statues of the divine Augustus, for instance, for that
monarch much prized the material. _Vitrum hæmatinum_, ‘a red opaque
glass,’ is passed over rapidly. ‘White glass is made also, and murrhine
and glass resembling the hyacinth and the sapphire and glass of all
other colours.[50] There is no substance easier to work or to which
brighter colours can be given. The highest place must, however, be
accorded to the white transparent glass which much resembles crystal;
for drinking, it has driven out vessels of gold and silver.’ This
passage is of the greatest importance. We see that a pure white glass
was still, even in Pliny’s time, something noticeable. This was, as we
shall see, again the case at the time of the Renaissance, when it was
the aim of the glass-makers, all over Western Europe, to imitate the
_Vetro di cristallo_ of the Venetians.
It will be noticed that Pliny makes no mention of the method of
preparation of the alkali used in making glass (in ‘tempering the
sand,’ as he puts it). From the context it would seem that the _nitrum_
was always of the same nature as that brought by the mariners to the
Phœnician coast—this is, however, very unlikely. Nor have we any
information about the arrangement of the furnaces. These glass houses
were, however, well known to the beggars and loungers of the time—we
hear of them as places of resort in cold weather for those who had no
other way of warming themselves. In the Greek Anthology (No. 323), of
all places in the world, there is a fragment by one Mesomedes, a
contemporary and favourite of Hadrian, giving an account of a visit to
a glass-house. Just at the point where the little poem breaks off, the
workman is described as placing the molten mass between the blades of
the pincers or shears.
Strabo tells us that when he was at Alexandria—he was there, we know,
in the early part of the reign of Augustus (_circa_ 24 B.C.)—he was
assured by the glass-workers (ὑαλουργοί) that their ‘many-coloured
and sumptuous glass’ could not be made without the addition of a
certain glassy earth which was only found in Egypt, a story which
points to the jealousy of foreign competition on the part of these
craftsmen. So on the Phœnician coast he hears from some of the
wonderful qualities of the Sidonian sand, while others tell him that
one sand is as good as another. Strabo goes on to speak of the
improvements made ‘quite lately’ in the clear crystal glass of which
the manufacture had not long since been established at Rome. Compare
with this the account of Pliny; in view of his certainly rather vague
statements, we should hardly have looked for this _cristallo_ in Italy
at so early a date.
But it is neither from Italy nor from the countries bordering the
Eastern Mediterranean that the most important supply of Roman glass has
been obtained. Putting aside objects of quite local _provenance_, it
will be found that in the museums of England, France, and Germany, by
far the larger part of the glass exhibited—and this is above all the
case with the blown glass—has been found within the limits of the
ancient Gallia. Spain, contrary to what we might have expected, has
yielded little Roman glass of any artistic merit, partly perhaps for
want of systematic search. But there are few districts in France or in
the west of Germany where the exploration of Roman cemeteries has not
yielded a plentiful crop. If we travel northward from the estuary of
the Rhone by way of Arles and Nismes to Avignon, Valence, and Lyons,
then across by the country on either side of the Jura to the valley of
the Rhine, and follow that river by Strassburg to Cologne, we pass for
the whole way through a district especially rich in Roman glass. And
this is what might well be looked for. The third and fourth
centuries—a little earlier or a little later, according to
locality—are above all the great centuries for the prevalent use of
glass, and it was during this period that the central tract of country
that included the two great metropolitan cities of Arles and Trèves
began to take the prominent place that it maintained throughout the
early Middle Ages.
Even our English glass of this time, so much of which comes from
districts to the north and the south of the estuary of the Thames, may
be brought commercially at least into connection with the wealthy
provinces of Northern and Eastern Gaul. It was from these provinces
that glass was first imported, and from them, no doubt, the
glass-workers passed over to Britain.
In the case of the rich collection of Roman glass in the British
Museum, the backbone, as it were, is formed by the specimens excavated
from tombs in the neighbourhood of the lower Rhone valley—from Vaison,
near Vaucluse (the Comarmond collection), from Apt, and from Alais. At
Arles, in that district of tombs, the Aliscamps, which furnished Dante
with a well-known image, beneath the Christian sarcophagi (in these,
too, not a little glass has been found), the earlier Roman tombs lie on
the bed-rock. From these tombs numberless urns of glass, in cases of
lead or stone, have been taken, as well as many examples of glass of
rare and exceptional shapes—among others what is apparently an alembic
for use in distillation. Some of these vessels contain a red liquid
which may _represent_ at least the wine with which they were originally
filled (Froehner, p. 109). In this town of Arles, too, in the suburb of
Trinquetailles, there were probably extensive glass-works, as we may
infer from the quantity of vitrified paste there found (Quicherat,
_Revue Archéologique_, xxviii.).
To pass to the Roman cemeteries of Lyons: in the museum of that town
are some curious masses of blue frit taken lately from a tomb on the
Fourvière, which call to mind the fritted cobalt or smalt exported in
modern times from the Saxon mines. We have in the British Museum many
pieces of glass from older explorations at the adjacent suburb of St.
Irénée. There is in the Lyons Museum a sepulchral stele of much
interest found in this very district; it is to the memory of a certain
Julius Alexander, a citizen of Carthage, a craftsman in the art of
glass (_opifici artis vitreæ_). This Punic glass-blower left behind him
children and grandchildren, who doubtless followed his trade. We must
not infer too much from a single instance; we know, however, from other
sources,[51] that there was a large influx into Gaul at this time of
Semitic people, chiefly of a humble status, craftsmen and small
merchants, and that they found their way in above all by the valley of
the Rhone. These ubiquitous traders are generally referred to as
Syrians, and I think it likely that the glass trade, not only in the
south of Gaul but further afield, may have been in great measure in the
hands of Orientals of this class. This would be especially true of the
manufacture and hawking about of small objects of _verroterie_,[52] and
again of glass pastes containing lead. But perhaps also the preparation
of the more ambitious and artistic kinds of glass was in the same
hands, leaving only the common ware to the native workmen; in that case
the distinction so important in later days between the _cristallo_ and
the ‘forest-glass’ may have had its prototype in Roman times. It should
be borne in mind that these Semitic craftsmen would for the most part
speak Greek rather than Latin, an important point that I have not space
to develop here.
As we pass to Northern Gaul we find examples of a glass of a pronounced
greenish tint more and more predominating—bulky urns, square and
spherical, and jugs with ‘claw’ handles. All of these forms we are
familiar with in England. The museums of Amiens and Boulogne are
especially rich in this glass, and in Paris the local finds are well
represented in the Musée Carnavalet.
On the other hand, in the glass of the Rhine district, including of
course the Moselle, we have a return to the more varied types that we
met with in the south. Trèves was the northern rival of Arles; it
formed the centre of a rich district, including Lorraine on the one
hand and the Rhine provinces on the other, where the manufacture of
glass by the third century became an important industry. And this
district has for us a special interest, for here more than anywhere
else we have some evidence to show that the industry was carried on
without interruption throughout the Middle Ages. The museums of Trèves,
of Cologne and of Bonn, are above all rich in Roman glass, and the
German archæologists have endeavoured—and this has hardly been
attempted elsewhere—to arrange this glass in a chronological sequence.
They think that they can distinguish the following stages in the
industry:—1. Up to 50 A.D. glass was a rarity in the north, but the
millefiori and marbled glass of the south was imported to some extent.
2. After the middle of the first century, glass-works were established
for the manufacture of large urns and smaller vessels of a
‘_Natur-glas_,’ bluish rather than greenish in tint. 3. In the time of
Hadrian (117-130 A.D.) a pure white glass was introduced; this was more
liable to decay than the older bluish glass. 4. The period of the
greatest development was about 200 A.D. Many kinds of decoration were
in fashion, as zig-zag threadings on coloured glass. 5. After 250 A.D.
This was the time of the glass with the _Frontinus_ stamp.[53] The
prevailing tint is a strong green, no longer bluish; the decoration is
given chiefly by engraving and cutting; Christian subjects begin to
appear. To this period also belongs glass decorated with coloured
medallions of glass paste.
I give this scheme of classification under all reserve; the
interlarding of a period of white glass between two stages of ‘green
glass’ may perhaps be open to criticism, but at all events it is a step
in the right direction. It must be borne in mind that this Rhenish
glass belongs to the same Romano-Celtic family as that found in France,
but, as in the latter country, the Celtic element is scarcely
perceptible. The art was an entirely new one, and there was no earlier
tradition to influence the work as in the case of the contemporary
pottery, armour, or sculpture.
It so happens that the Roman glass of Gaul has been most carefully
studied in a district far away from the route that we have been
following. In Western France the researches of M. Benjamin Fillon
(_L’Art de la terre chez les Poitevins_, 1864, and other works) have
brought to light the remains of old glass-works. These appear to have
been generally situated far from the main centres, and they were often
associated with potteries. It would even seem that glass was at one
time more in favour and perhaps cheaper than earthenware. A curious
point is the number of localities in Poitou and La Vendée which bear
names such as La Verrerie and Verrière; at as many as seven places with
names of this class, M. Fillon claims to have found the remains of
Gallo-Roman glass-works. These do not appear to have been established
before the time of Trajan, and it is to the age of the Antonines in the
second century that the more important examples of glass are to be
attributed. Of somewhat later date than this, however, are the fifty
pieces of white glass from the villa and tomb of a _femme-artiste_ at
St. Médard-des-Prés. This was M. Fillon’s most important find; some of
the vases contained various coloured substances and resins, and they
were closed by stoppers of wood or by sheaths of bronze.[54]
The British Museum has lately acquired a large collection of
Gallo-Roman glass formed by M. Moret. Among this glass—it comes
chiefly from late Gallic cemeteries in the neighbourhood of Paris, as
from Corbeil and Conflans (Confluentia), and also from the Rheims
district—may be seen beakers with circular feet and wide-mouthed cups
with rounded bases.[55] To one of these a fantastic decoration has been
given by a contorted streak of blood-like tint in the midst of the
glass—caused by the perhaps accidental presence of a fragment of
copper-oxide; we have here at any rate one of the earliest instances of
the use of this valuable pigment to obtain a transparent red. Notice,
too, the large receptacle cast in the form of a fish; similar vessels
have been found at Arles, and they have been brought into connection
with the well-known Christian symbol of the ἰχθύς.
ROMAN GLASS IN BRITAIN
There does not seem to be any example of a vessel of glass from a
pre-Roman tomb in Britain. The little ribbed bowls that have been found
in Celtic tombs further south did not apparently reach our country.
The ὕαλα σκεύη and the λυγκούρια mentioned by Strabo in an involved
passage as among the imports into Britain, we must interpret as _beads_
of glass and amber. From that time until the eighth century, when the
Venerable Bede wrote his history, we have not a word of documentary
evidence bearing upon the question of glass in our country. Nor have we
any definite evidence, apart from a few lumps of glass that may have
had their origin in an accidental fire, that any glass-works existed in
England during this long interval,—no evidence, that is to say, apart
from that based upon the large amount of Roman glass found in England
and the size of many of the specimens. The English glass, however, in
no way differs from that taken from Roman tombs in the north of France.
I have mentioned already the most noticeable types—the large urns, both
spherical and quadrangular, the graceful jugs and vases with ribbed
handles, and the little bowls of thin moulded glass with scenes taken
from the circus. It is perhaps remarkable that the art of the enameller
on metal, which we know at this time had been brought to a great
perfection in Britain,[56] appears in no way to have influenced the
glass-blower, and it would seem that in Britain glass vessels have been
rarely found together with specimens of champlevé enamel.[57]
Most of the finer examples of native Roman glass in our museums have
been excavated from cemeteries adjacent to the lower Thames valley,
around Colchester and other stations to the north, but above all on the
southern bank, in the district lying between the mouth of the Medway
and the Isle of Thanet. In this neighbourhood, in the flat land between
Sittingbourne and Faversham, were situated what were probably the most
extensive potteries of Britain, and it is hereabouts if anywhere in
England that we might look for traces of glass-works of Roman date. As
we go further west and further north, glass, large examples at any
rate, becomes comparatively rare, and this is true even of the
neighbourhood of such important stations as York and Cirencester.
[Illustration:
_PLATE IX_
ROMAN GLASS FROM BRITISH GRAVES]
In the case of the glass of the ancients, the material is so vast, so
varied, and spread over so wide an area, that a concentrated treatment
of the subject, as this must needs be, is rendered very difficult. Much
that is both interesting and important must be omitted or only briefly
alluded to; and this must be my excuse for making little more than a
passing mention of the inscriptions found at times on this glass.
These inscriptions fall into two classes:—1. A propitiatory sentence
or expression of well-wishing addressed, it would seem, to the person
to whom the piece is presented; of such we have already given some
examples. 2. The name of the maker. With few exceptions these
inscriptions are confined to glass that has been blown into a mould,
and this for practical reasons which will be obvious.
The signature of Ennion may be read in many cases on little vases
or bottles found in Italy, in Cyprus, and in the Crimea. Ennion
worked probably at Sidon or at Tyre and quite possibly as far back
as the third century B.C. The words ΜΝΗϹΘΗ Ο ΑΓΟΡΑΖΩΝ ‘Let the
buyer remember,’ which he sometimes added to his name, were perhaps
intended to accentuate the signature. The glass-blowers of Sidon seem
to have been proud of their native town; along with their signature
its name generally appears on the ‘thumb-piece’ of the handle: that
of Irenæus is in each case accompanied by the head of an emperor in
relief—Augustus or perhaps Caligula. Artas, whose signature has been
found more often than any other, gives his name both in Latin and
Greek—ARTAS SIDON—ΑΡΤΑϹ ϹΕΙΔΩ.
Let us now pass to examples of a later date that are characteristically
and distinctly Roman. What can be more so than the large quadrangular
bottles, on the base of which so many inscriptions have been found?
Here, as on the contemporary pottery, the reference is generally to the
owner of the works whose name is accompanied sometimes by the word
_patrimonium_. But the inscription is often reduced to four letters
placed in the angles—letters that have been a standing puzzle to
antiquaries. Many pieces of glass bearing the stamp of Firmus, of
Hilarus, or again of Hylas—contracted or in the genitive case—have
been found not only in Italy (as in the neighbourhood of Perugia), but
also in the Cologne district. On the other hand, the signature of
Frontinus is above all frequent on a series of barrel-shaped glass
vessels of a late date, which come from various places in the north of
France, more especially from Picardy; but the signature is found in the
Rhine country also. The firm seems to have been as important and its
outturn as widespread as that of the Bonhomme family of Liége in the
seventeenth century. Several examples of the Frontinus signature in
various forms are given by M. Froehner.[58]
It is a curious fact that in no case, as far as I am aware, has the
custom of the manufacturer adding his name to the glass made by him
become general in later times. The practical difficulties in the case
of blown glass may be a sufficient reason for this. Perhaps the most
important exception may be found in the stamps of makers’ names on
wine-bottles of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
Let me in one final word accentuate what seems to me the commanding
point of interest in this rich and varied series—the glass of the
Romans. We have in it the one branch of Roman art that was not
dominated by Greek influence and traditions; it was an art which,
although essentially developed under the Roman rule, had its origin in
Semitic lands. As an industry I cannot help thinking that it spread
along with that interpenetration of Hellenised Syrians that played so
important a part in the propagation of Christianity and other Oriental
cults through the west of Europe.