GLASS FROM ANGLO-SAXON AND FRANKISH TOMBS.
THE SO-CALLED HEDWIG GLASSES
We must now turn to the Germanic tribes of the north. Thanks to the
late conversion of these tribes to Christianity, we have in the objects
found in their graves a comparatively rich store of information, up to
as late a date as the sixth and seventh centuries.
A few rare specimens of glass of an essentially Byzantine character
have been found in these pagan cemeteries. The most remarkable,
perhaps, is the tall, somewhat spindle-shaped vase discovered in 1894
in a South-Saxon cemetery at the foot of the South Downs, some five
miles to the west of Worthing.[73] The design which encircles the body
of this vase has been engraved somewhat summarily with the wheel; we
see a hound pursuing two hares—formal fern-like fronds rise between.
The Greek inscription round the top in large letters is similarly cut;
the expression ✠ Ο ΥΓΙΕΝΩΝ ΧΡΩ may be regarded as equivalent to
the Latin _Utere feliciter_—‘May the draught do you good!’ In this
little vase we have perhaps the latest example of classical glass of
sepulchral origin.
The glass of our Anglo-Saxon ancestors must be considered in connection
with that found in the graves of kindred tribes on the Continent. Of
these, the most important are the Frankish people who dwelt for some
time before their conversion to Christianity in the district between
the Rhine and the Ardennes. It is here, more especially in the middle
valley of the Meuse, about Namur and Liége, that the most important
finds have been made; the more elaborate examples, at any rate, of this
Franko-Saxon[74] glass were possibly manufactured in this district.
Now the importance for us of this glass from pagan cemeteries lies in
the fact that in it we have the latest important and independent group
of glass of which anything is known, until we come to the Saracenic
enamelled ware of the thirteenth century. In England, indeed, the gap
extends to a much later period; but in the case of Western Germany
there is some reason to believe that the Frankish fashions and
traditions of glass-making were carried on without any break during the
Middle Ages—that, in fact, in this early mediæval glass may be found a
link between the glass of Roman times and that in use in the Rhine
district up to the time when the influence of the Renaissance first
asserted itself. In Southern and Western France, on the other hand,
although the glass-workers may in places have carried on the old
workings, what they made was of no artistic importance. We have in this
case nothing equivalent to the outcome of the renewed interest taken in
the material by the northern chieftains—the _verre à fougère_ was a
product of the woods and heaths.
The Oriental influence—the distinguishing feature in all the glass of
which I have treated in the last chapter—is not so pronounced in the
glass of the Franko-Saxon peoples as in their jewellery and metal-work.
In these we find the mark of influences that had their source in the
East at two if not three widely separated periods. As for the earliest
of these, it is not only pre-Roman but probably pre-Hellenic: its
relations are rather with Asiatic than classical lands. The brooches
and buckles inlaid with garnets, and the quaint animal forms with which
the metal designs are built up, take us back perhaps to an earlier
Asiatic civilisation which is best represented in the Persia of
Achæmenid times.[75] The second of these periods of Oriental influence
is to be associated with the introduction of the Christian religion.
Again, at a still later time some of the older Oriental motives crept
in in a modified form with the pagan Danes and even with the Normans.
[Illustration:
_PLATE XV_
1. BEADS WITH _APPLIQUÉ_ DECORATION
GREEK OR PHŒNICIAN. ABOUT SIXTH CENTURY. B.C.
2. CHEVRON BEADS, FORMED FROM SOLID RODS
PROBABLY VENETIAN
3, 4 & 5. MISCELLANEOUS BEADS, FROM FRANKISH AND OTHER TOMBS IN RHINE
AND MOSELLE DISTRICT
EARLY MEDIÆVAL]
As far as glass is concerned, it is in the beads that we see most
clearly the return to the older fashions. Of these Franko-Saxon beads
the British Museum has a great store, not only from English graves but
from those of the Franks and other Germanic tribes on the Continent.
Now these beads differ entirely from those found in Celtic and Roman
tombs. Of these last, the dominant type—and we must confine ourselves
to this—is of a turquoise or deep blue, generally more or less
transparent, and they are often longitudinally ribbed. In a collection
of Germanic beads, on the other hand, the prevailing colours are red
and yellow, of ochry tints; they are almost invariably quite opaque,
and the patterns are mostly built up on the surface in a way that
reminds us of the primitive glass of the Eastern Mediterranean (Plate
XV. 3). A herring-bone pattern of fine lines is very characteristic,
and the delicacy of the designs on some of the beads from Allemanic
graves in Switzerland and elsewhere rivals that of the highly finished
work of the Egyptians.
Of this early Germanic glass generally, we may say that the greatest
interest lies in the types that depart most from the Roman glass which
preceded it, and on which it is of course as a whole founded. In some
cases the northern influence is only seen in a certain barbaric
magnificence—as in the examples from Germanic graves in Italy, lately
added to the collection in the Glass Room at the British Museum. Here
we see for the first time the drinking-horn of the north; this fine
specimen, trumpet-ended and fluted with long gadroons, is of a deep
blue glass wound round with white threads. Of similar origin is the
_rhyton_, of moulded glass of a rich amber colour, which lies beside
it. It may be noted that this form too, in spite of its classical
associations, was originally, as the name implies, derived from the
horn of some animal. It is not impossible that these vessels were made
by local Italian glass-workers to the order of the barbarians, on the
occasion of the burial of one of their leaders.
These are, however, only local accidental finds. With the glass used
by, or at least buried with the bodies of, our Anglo-Saxon ancestors
during the two centuries that followed their arrival in England, we
have a fairly intimate acquaintance; as I have said, it differs little
from the contemporary or in some cases rather earlier Frankish glass of
the Rhine, Moselle, and Meuse districts.
That glass was made in the south of Britain in Roman times there is
every reason to believe, and we look in Kent for the most probable
place for its manufacture, somewhere, perhaps, not far from the estuary
of the Medway (cf. p. 86). It is the Kentish graves again that have
yielded the largest quantity of Anglo-Saxon glass, as well as the
greatest varieties of forms. It is noticeable, however, that specimens
of what is the most remarkable and characteristic type of Anglo-Saxon
glass have been found in many other parts of the country. I refer of
course to the horns and conical cups decorated with long pendulous
lobes or ‘prunts.’ These drinking-cups have been found, apart from the
Kentish examples, in Durham, Gloucestershire, Hampshire,
Cambridgeshire, and in the upper Thames valley. Individual prunts
(these ‘thorned bosses’ are more substantial than the thin surrounding
glass) have occasionally turned up in excavations in London and
elsewhere. Abroad, precisely similar vessels have been taken from
Frankish graves in the Rhine provinces. It is more remarkable that
several cups so ornamented have been found in Illyria, in the Narenta
Valley. Mr. Arthur Evans traces these ‘thorn-bossed beakers’ to the
graves of Ostrogothic chiefs, and thinks that their fragility may be
taken as a proof of local manufacture (_Archæologia_, vol. xlviii. pp.
75-84). On the other hand, the high technical skill required in the
blowing of such glasses has led most antiquaries to regard our English
examples as of Continental origin, not improbably from the Rhine or
Meuse country.
[Illustration:
_PLATE XVI_
PRUNTED BEAKER, FROM ANGLO-SAXON BURIAL MOUND
TAPLOW]
Mr. Hartshorne (_Old English Glasses_, p. 119) has attempted to
reconstitute the steps by which these ‘thorn-bossed beakers’ were made.
He thinks that after the vessel had been blown from a ‘gathering,’
lumps of molten glass were applied one by one to the sides. ‘The hot
liquid metal acting upon the thin cooled sides of the object caused it
to give way successively at the points of attachment under renewed
pressure by blowing. The concavities thus formed extended into the
bodies of the prunts, the projecting points of which, being seized by
the _pucella_, were rapidly drawn forward to a tail and attached to the
outside of the glass lower down,’ This, of course, was before the
vessel had been removed from the blowing-iron, and Mr. Hartshorne finds
in this fact a reason for the prunts in this early glass always
drooping downwards, while the somewhat similar _stachelnuppen_, or
‘blobs,’ on sixteenth- and seventeenth-century German glasses, added as
they were after the transference of the vessel to the _pontil_,
invariably point upwards. ‘The whole of the pendant lobes,’ continues
Mr. Hartshorne, ‘having been thus put on and quilled and ornamented, as
some examples show, the _pontil_ was attached to the base, the
blowing-iron wetted off the other end, and the closed bulb being
softened at the mouth of the pot, presently became an open cup; the
mouth of the glass was now sheared, widened, and finished, the
stringing of the upper end of the vase usually forming part of the
final operation.’
The tall conical cup of olive-green glass in the British Museum, found
a few years ago with so many fine specimens of Anglo-Saxon metal-work
and inlaid jewellery, in a tumulus opened by Mr. Grenfell, at Taplow on
the Thames, may be taken as an example in which these processes may be
followed (Pl. XVI.). The quilling or toothing along the side of the
prunts is very similar to that often seen at the point of attachment of
the handle on Roman vases.[76]
Now these prunted beakers are of interest for two reasons. In the first
place, we cannot find any Roman prototype for the long drooping tears
of glass. Again, the fact of the wide distribution of almost identical
pieces would point to the necessity of throwing back the date of origin
for some considerable time. But at what point in their wanderings did
these Germanic tribes acquire this remarkable skill in the handling of
glass? The fact that these processes were known to the Ostrogoths in
the fifth or sixth century makes an Oriental origin for this system of
decoration not unlikely. In any case, this type of prunted surface
seems to have had a special attraction for the Germanic peoples, for we
can hardly doubt that from these old thorn-bossed beakers and horns, by
continuous tradition, the _stachelnuppen_ on the _krautstrunk_ and the
_roemer_ of the sixteenth century were derived.
Much more numerous in the Anglo-Saxon tombs are—1st, the little
bottles of simple form often stringed spirally round the neck (or in
other cases the stringing may be applied to form rude gadroons and
other patterns on the body); and 2nd, the small wide-mouthed and
footless cups, often of bell-like section. These were held in the palm
of the hand while drinking, as we may see in contemporary manuscripts
and perhaps in the Bayeux tapestry.[77] They are true tumblers in the
original sense of the word, in that they have no foot and will not
stand upright. A very similar form is common in Merovingian graves.
[Illustration:
_PLATE XVII_
DRINKING CUPS FROM ANGLO-SAXON GRAVES]
The tall, conical, trumpet-shaped cups are often carefully made and of
considerable artistic merit (Plate XVII.); the sides are sometimes
gadrooned and fluted, and threadings of glass of various colours are
applied to them. On a fine specimen found in the cemetery of the South
Saxons near Worthing, the stringing has been ‘dragged’ to form graceful
festoons or chevrons, calling to mind the patterns on the primitive
glass of the Eastern Mediterranean.
The simpler forms—the little bottles and cups—may well have been made
in some of our southern counties, perhaps in the very glass-houses
abandoned by the Romans; at any rate in Kent, the Jutish graves from
which so much of this glass has been derived are, as I have said,
intimately associated with the earlier Romano-British cemeteries. On
the other hand, for the north of England, we have the distinct
statement made by Bede, in his _Historia Ecclesiastica_, that at the
end of the seventh century the glass-workers who were brought over from
Gaul taught to the natives not only the making of glass for windows,
but also of glass ‘for the lamps in use in the church, and for vessels
for other various and not ignoble uses.’ So again a little later, in
the middle of the eighth century, Cuthbert of Jarrow, writing this time
to the Bishop of Mainz, says: ‘If you have any man in your diocese who
is skilful in the making of glass, I pray you send him to me, ...
seeing that of that art we are ignorant and without resource.’ That at
this later period Cuthbert should have had to send all the way to Mainz
is, I think, a point of some significance.
The ensuing centuries are the most barren in the whole history of
glass. We know that in France the glass-workers returned to the woods
to manufacture in large quantities the _verre à fougère_—common glass
for domestic use, which does not seem to have come into any close
relation with the artistic movements of the time. Here before long all
interest was centred in the manufacture of stained glass for the
windows of the churches, and this art became of supreme importance with
the rapid development of the new architecture in the twelfth century.
Whether we in England at so early a date manufactured glass to any
extent on either of these lines is, I am afraid, still a disputed point.
It was in Germany, and especially in the intermediate tract that for a
time existed as an independent kingdom—in Lotharingia, I mean—that
the old traditions seem to have held their ground most firmly. To
Germany from time to time during the Middle Ages came new waves of
influence from the East, by various and sometimes very circuitous
paths,—in Charlemagne’s time by way of Ravenna and Rome, more directly
from Constantinople in the tenth century, when Otto the Great married
his son to the grand-daughter of the Greek Emperor. About the same time
we hear of Greek craftsmen at work in German monasteries, as at
Reichenau on the lower Lake of Constance, where, by the way, a great
slab of bluish-green glass, traditionally of Byzantine origin, is still
preserved.[78]
[Illustration:
_PLATE XVIII_
GLASS CUP, CARVED IN HIGH RELIEF
GERMAN OR ORIENTAL. TWELFTH OR THIRTEENTH CENTURY]
But it was probably by more remote paths, through Poland and other
Slavonic lands to the east,[79] that the designs on the only specimens
of mediæval glass still existing in Germany that show distinctly
oriental motives[80]—if indeed the glasses are not themselves
Oriental—found their way westward. I refer to the rare carved goblets,
about which so much has been written in Germany. The glass of these
little cylindrical cups—they vary in height from three to five
inches—is of a yellowish-green or brownish tint, at times indeed
nearly colourless; it contains many bubbles. These so-called Hedwig
glasses are carved in high relief on the outside: as many as nine
examples have been described by Von Czihak (_Schlesische Gläser_, p.
184 _seq._), but of these only two can in any way be brought into
connection with St. Hedwig.[81]
The carving upon these glasses is deeply cut, but excessively rude.
They bear the mark of a large coarse wheel, applied for the most part
in two directions more or less at right angles to one another, and
little attempt has been made to round off the edges and angles. We see
in the decoration—figures of lions, griffins or eagles, as well as
formal leaf-like patterns—motives that are essentially Oriental;
indeed we are taken back rather to the Persia of Sassanian times than
to Constantinople. What is above all noticeable is the extreme
degeneracy of these motives; on some examples, as on the Halberstadt
glass, the design has become a meaningless pattern. This, as in the
case of other similar breakings up of design,[82] would point to the
copying and recopying by a semi-barbarous people of a subject the
original significance of which had been lost. In any case, we may see
in these little beakers the last examples of a dying art. Some of them
may be traced back, on the ground of their mounting, to the fourteenth,
perhaps to the thirteenth, century, but the glasses themselves may well
be considerably older. The important point to remember is that during
the later Middle Ages the carving of glass was quite unknown in Europe,
and that the art of employing the lapidary’s wheel as a cutting
instrument appears to have been lost. Indeed we do not meet with carved
glass again in any form until the beginning of the seventeenth century,
and then the rapid development of the art by the Lehmanns and the
Schwanharts at Prague is acknowledged to have depended upon technical
processes learned from Italian carvers of rock crystal.
I will now enumerate the most characteristic of these carved glasses,
basing my description in part upon the careful account given by Von
Czihak in his _Schlesische Gläser_.
1. In the Museum of Silesian Antiquities at Breslau. The design
consists of a vase, surmounted by a crescent and star; on either side
heraldic lions, each surmounted by a small three-cornered shield,
beyond them a conventionalised tree; the whole most rudely cut.
(Figured by Von Czihak.)
2. In the treasury of the Cathedral at Cracow. Lions and shields as
above, and eagle ‘displayed.’ It is claimed for these two glasses that
they were used by St. Hedwig.
3. In the Germanic Museum at Nuremberg. Two lions ‘passant’ in the same
direction; small shields as above and a griffin (Plate XVIII.).
4. In the Rijks Museum at Amsterdam. Eagle ‘displayed,’ two lions and
triangular shields. This glass was formerly an heirloom in the
Nassau-Orange family. On the base is engraved ‘_Alsz diesz glas war alt
tausend Jahr, es Pfalzgraff Ludwig Philipszen Werehret war_—1643.’
(Figured by Hartshorne and by Garnier.)
The above four examples closely resemble one another; in each case the
design is relieved upon a scalloped back, something like the linen-fold
of late Gothic wood-panelling.
5. In the Cathedral treasury at Minden. The glass is of a pale honey
tint. The design is formed of a lion with a shield containing a
triangle, an eagle displayed and a ‘tree of life,’ somewhat similar to
that on No. 1. The elements of the design are arranged stiffly with a
wide field between. (Figured by Von Czihak.)
6. Formerly in the Cathedral at Halberstadt, now in Berlin, in private
hands. Of greenish glass, only three and a half inches in height.
Design—two lions and triangular shield.
7. In the Cathedral Treasury at Halberstadt. The design on this little
glass has degenerated into a meaningless juxtaposition of bosses, bars,
and fretted bands. (Figured by Von Czihak.)
This appears to exhaust the list of these little carved glass beakers.
There is nothing in the treasury of St. Mark’s that can distinctly be
classed with them; on the other hand, the ‘_voirre taille d’un esgle,
d’un griffon et d’une double couronne_,’ mentioned in the inventory of
the possessions of Charles the Bold of Burgundy, may well have been a
cup of this class (Laborde, _Les Ducs de Bourgogne_, ii. No. 2753).