THE ENAMELLED GLASS OF THE SARACENS—_continued_
I will now pass in review some of the more famous specimens of
Saracenic glass.
Of the ‘Goblet of the Eight Priests,’ now in the museum at Douai
(figured in Gerspach, p. 107), we have an earlier record than in other
cases. It was bequeathed by one Marguerite Mallet, early in the
fourteenth century, along with other property, for the endowment of
that number of chantry priests. The case of _cuir bouilli_ in which the
goblet is preserved is a remarkable specimen of the French art of that
time. The inscription on this cup is unfortunately now illegible.
For the ‘Glass of Charlemagne,’ which has passed from the treasury of
an abbey near Chartres to the museum of that town, it is claimed that
it was presented by Harun-ar-Rashid to the great Emperor. M. Schefer
many years ago made this cup the starting-point of a special memoir, in
which he collected a mass of information from Arab sources. This essay
may perhaps be regarded as the earliest example of any intelligent
interest in this class of Oriental glass.
The ‘Luck of Eden Hall,’ long preserved in the home of the Musgrave
family, has acquired a certain factitious celebrity from a legend that
has served as the theme of more than one ballad, none, however, of any
great antiquity.[117] Like the Douai cup, it is preserved in a leathern
case—in this instance not of earlier date than the beginning of the
fifteenth century. The ‘Luck’ is figured in Lysons’s _Magna Britannia_,
vol. iv.
These three goblets form a compact group. In all of them the decoration
is simple, consisting chiefly of interlaced bands or straps forming
geometrical patterns. There are no figures of men or animals, and the
colouring is for the most part confined to blue and gold. We may,
perhaps, attribute these glasses to the beginning rather than the end
of the thirteenth century.
Probably of as early a date is the goblet preserved at Breslau (there
is a photograph of it in Von Czihak’s _Schlesische Gläser_). Here there
is no ornament apart from some fine arabesques of gold. This cup has
long been associated with St. Hedwig, but it must not be confused with
other so-called ‘Hedwig glasses,’ which, as we have seen, are carved in
the manner of rock crystal.
I now come to a more elaborately enamelled group, in the decoration of
which the human figure plays an important part.
In the Grüne Gewölbe at Dresden are two beakers or _hanaps_ of this
class, set in rich silver-gilt mountings of the fifteenth and sixteenth
centuries. Round one of these cylindrical beakers runs a spirited
frieze, with polo-players, mounted on brown, white, and yellow horses;
above is a cufic inscription in gold on a blue ground (Plate XXV.). On
the other beaker, probably the earlier of the two, we see a group of
brilliantly clad turbaned figures seated by a flowing stream—the water
is naïvely rendered by a meandering line of blue enamel; the background
is formed by a flight of aquatic birds. On both these glasses, beside
the usual gamut of colours—gold, blue, red, green, yellow, and opaque
white—we find some mixed brownish tints.
[Illustration:
_PLATE XXV_
SARACENIC ENAMELLED GLASS
CIRCA 1300. GERMAN METAL MOUNTING OF SIXTEENTH CENTURY]
Somewhat taller than these Dresden _hanaps_ is the beaker at
Wilhelmshöhe (it is some nine inches in height). The decoration—an _al
fresco_ wine-party with musicians—calls to mind one of the groups of
figures on the Würzburg flask. Somewhat similar is the beaker preserved
in the picture gallery at Cassel, but the enamels on this are
distinctly poorer.
A beautiful beaker of this class came to the British Museum with the
Waddesdon collection. It stands upon a French-Gothic mounting of the
fourteenth century. We see a prince seated on his throne, with
attendants on either side. The glass is colourless and clear, and among
the enamels a palish green, applied as a thin wash, should be
noted.[118]
Since then another goblet of this class has been acquired by the
British Museum. This cup is said to have been dug up in the
neighbourhood of Aleppo. The glass is much decayed, in this forming an
exception to the other goblets of the class. The design includes two
conventional palm-trees, whose trunks are built up of a series of
nodes.[119]
On a goblet from Coptos, in the same collection, a number of little
fish in grisaille or dull red constitute the sole decoration. There is
a fragment of glass similarly decorated at South Kensington, which
came, I think, from Achmin. We find the same little fishes again on a
cup of glass, described as a _godet à l’huile_, lately added to the
Louvre collection.
These examples practically exhaust the list of the lamp-shaped goblets
of undoubted Oriental origin. But it would be impossible at this point
to pass over the absolutely unique cup from the Adrian Hope collection,
decorated with a seated figure of the Virgin. This goblet is now in the
British Museum, and it is there described as Venetian of the thirteenth
century (Plate I.). The glass, somewhat thick and slightly greenish in
hue, with a few drawn bubbles, in no way differs from that of the
beakers already described.[120] So of the shape and of the quality and
colours of the enamel. The slight ‘kick,’ however, at the base is
normal: that is to say, there is no aperture (see above, p. 159); the
cup, therefore, needs no rim or stand. As regards the decoration, we
find, in addition to the usual colours, an inscription in Gothic
lettering, now quite black, but originally executed in silver. I shall
return to this cup in the next chapter. I mention it here as I am
inclined to find for it an Oriental _provenance_.
I have dwelt at perhaps disproportionate length on this special type of
goblet. We have here, however, a group from a historical point of view,
of exceptional interest.
A small damaged goblet of cylindrical shape at South Kensington forms a
transition to the group of larger beakers. It bears a series of
medallions of blue enamel containing a curious design—a bird of prey
seizing a duck. The cylindrical goblets with projecting collars do not
present any special point for remark. There is some reason for
regarding the quaint little flasks, with narrow swelling necks, as an
early type. There are two of this class at South Kensington; in both
cases the glass is much decomposed. Better preserved is the little
bottle with the red eagle figured in Schmoranz (Plate vii.); the
evidence, however, for the early date (1217) given to it is not quite
conclusive.
It is not known at what time the large pilgrim’s bottle in the
Domschatz of St. Stephan at Vienna was brought from the Holy Land
(Schmoranz, Plate iv.). Much of the surface is left undecorated, and
the glass is whitened by the chalky earth with which it is still
filled. This earth is reputed to have come from Bethlehem, and to be
stained with the blood of the Holy Innocents. The main design of
musicians, seated beneath a conventional tree beside a stream
(represented by a blue meander), calls to mind the decoration of one of
the Dresden beakers. Near in style to this flask is the quaintly shaped
pilgrim’s bottle in the British Museum, that was long in the possession
of a noble family at Würzburg. I have already spoken of the superlative
quality of the enamel on this remarkable example of Saracenic glass.
In the cathedral at Vienna is another enamelled vase (Schmoranz, Plate
xiii.). This graceful amphora-shaped vessel follows exactly on the
lines of the water jars of earthenware still in use on the coasts of
the Mediterranean. The blood-stained earth that it once contained is
gone, but the seal of attestation remains—strong evidence that the
bottle was purchased at Bethlehem by the German pilgrim who brought it
home. The blue is of a poor greyish tint, and the enamels on the whole
low in tone, but the interlaced geometrical design is not the less
decorative.
The little jug (Schmoranz, Pl. xxx.) now in the hands of one of the
Rothschild family in Paris, was purchased at the Hamilton sale for
£2730; in the catalogue it was described as a specimen of Venetian
glass! The enamels are brilliant and well preserved—polo-players,
mounted on horses of various colours, surround the body. A curious
feature is a collar of wood round the base of the neck, kept in place
by a series of claw-shaped projections.
The larger bottles with tall necks form a class by themselves; they are
often remarkable for the delicacy of the decoration. On the neck of a
tall and richly enamelled example in the museum at Vienna (Schmoranz,
Pls. vi. and vii.) we find a distinctly Chinese motive:—in addition to
the well-known phœnix may be seen a curious development of the cloud
pattern, in the shape of four many-coloured bars. There is a fine
example of these long-necked bottles at South Kensington and another in
the British Museum. The first is remarkable in combining on the same
piece motives from many sources—the Chinese phœnix, the so-called
Egyptian hieroglyph, together with birds and animals in many styles
(Plate XXIII.).
The bowls and dishes form a more miscellaneous group. These we may
regard as essentially ‘table ware.’ In Persian manuscripts—in the
illustrations to Hariri’s tales, for instance—we see such vessels
piled up with fruits and cakes.
The shallow plate belonging to Lord Rothschild is perhaps the oldest
example of this class in our collections. The medallions, skilfully
filled with groups of lions attacking deer and with other similar
subjects, are distinctly Byzantine, or some would say Sassanian, in
character.
An interest of another kind may be found in a pair of dishes, one
bowl-shaped, the other in the form of a tazza mounted on a tall foot,
which have long stood side by side in the Cluny Museum at Paris. These
are undoubtedly specimens of enamelled Saracenic glass, both probably
dating from the fourteenth century, the bowl, however, somewhat earlier
than the tazza. This latter vessel is decorated with a gold arabesque
combined with the thick translucent blue enamel and the red lines so
characteristic of Saracenic glass. A label, however, still proclaims
this tazza to be ‘Style Arabo-Venitien, XV^{me} siècle.’ On the other
hand, no less an authority than Labarte (_Histoire des Arts
Industriels_, iv. p. 546), it is true as long ago as 1864, found in
this tazza an example of one of the processes of enamelling described
by Theophilus, and on this ground deliberately declared it to be a
Byzantine work. On the basis of a vague inscription found on the
companion piece—the deep bowl—a whole theory of the Egyptian or
Byzantine-Egyptian origin of this enamelled glass has been built up by
a German writer (Carl Friedrich, _Die Alt-Deutschen Gläser_).
There is in the British Museum a large deep bowl with a gigantic cufic
inscription in blue, overlaid with scrolls of white enamel. The
coarsely executed but effective decoration calls to mind that on some
of the Cairene mosque lamps. This bowl is known to have come from
Damietta, and it may perhaps supply an argument for those who find the
origin of some of the enamelled glass in the neighbouring town of
Mansourah, where glass-works are known to have existed (Lane-Poole,
_Arab Art_, p. 209).
We have finally a class of high-footed bowls with lids; of these,
unfortunately, no undamaged example is known; the nearest approach is
perhaps the bowl with a perfect lid but defective foot in the British
Museum. The decoration in this case is of great interest. The
medallions in the field, with fleurs-de-lis, Chinese phœnixes, and
quaint monster-sphinxes and griffins, should be especially noted.
MOSQUE LAMPS
I now come to the Mosque Lamps, and here a more numerous family has to
be dealt with. In those instances where the lamps can be traced back to
well-known buildings in Cairo, or again when they bear the names of
Memlook sultans or of great officers of their court, a date can
generally be assigned without much hesitation.
A small lamp in the Arab Museum at Cairo, decorated with red
lines—apart from this there are only a few jewel-like spots of
enamel—bears a dedication which may be referred to either the
beginning or the end of the thirteenth century; in either case this
lamp is probably the earliest known to us (Schmoranz, Pl. XV.). Next in
order come those bearing the name of the Sultan Malek Nasir (the
successor of Kalaoun), whose long reign extended (with some
interruptions) from 1293 to 1341. On these lamps the polychrome
decoration is already fully developed: along with them must be placed
those bearing the name of several of this sultan’s emirs. To the reign
of the Sultan Baybars II. (1309-1310)[121] probably belongs the
beautiful lamp of deep cobalt blue glass that Mr. Pierpont Morgan
obtained from the Mannheim collection. There is only one other example,
as far as I know, of enamelling on a dark blue ground,—a lamp of
nearly the same date formerly belonging to M. Goupil.[122] The only
specimen apparently in our English collections of a lamp of so early a
date is the beautifully enamelled example at South Kensington (Myers
bequest), the inscription on which probably refers to the same Baybars.
By far the greater number of these lamps date from the latter half of
the fourteenth century. We have seen that the famous mosque built by
Sultan Hassan (1347-61) has provided numerous examples to our
collections. In these we already find less delicacy and detail in the
decoration, but the broad and effective treatment is well suited to the
position in which these lamps were placed, suspended as they were from
the arcades of spacious mosques.
The period of decline that set in after this time is usually associated
with the advance of Timur (Tamerlane). When in the year 1400 Damascus
was taken by that ruthless conqueror, we are told that he transplanted
to his new capital of Samarkand whole regiments of skilled Syrian
artisans, and among these the glass-workers are definitely mentioned.
Others of these men may have fled to Egypt; in any case the art
lingered on in that country for another hundred years. According to
Schmoranz, the latest known example of this school of Oriental
enamelled glass is a lamp from the mosque of Kaït Bey (1467-1495), now
in the Arab Museum at Cairo. In this specimen we see the art in the
lowest stage of decay.[123]
[Illustration:
_PLATE XXVI_
MOSQUE LAMP FROM CAIRO
FOURTEENTH CENTURY]
The rise and fall of this great school of enamellers on glass covers
but a brief period—a glorious interlude in the long story of the
glass-workers of Egypt and Syria. In the latter country after this
time, they appear in a measure to have fallen back upon the older and
more primitive methods, handed down, perhaps, from the days of
Phœnician and Egyptian domination. I have already spoken more than once
of the still existing glass-works near Hebron on the high plateau to
the west of the Dead Sea.
There remain, however, to be mentioned one or two mosque lamps which
depart from the normal type.
In the lamp (now at South Kensington), apparently of green jade-like
glass, which was brought with so many others from Cairo by the late
Captain Myers, the effect is obtained by a wash of green translucent
enamel over the whole of the _inner_ surface. The outside is covered
with an effective but somewhat summary decoration in gold and red
lines, without further enamelling. The Sultan named in the laudatory
inscription may be either Sultan Hassan or his father Nasir.
Another exceptional lamp now in the museum at Cairo is well illustrated
in Schmoranz’s great work (Pl. xi.). This is a smallish lamp of green
cloudy glass; the whole of the body and neck, except a plain band at
the top, is worked into shallow, wavy ribs. It bears no enamel, but on
the surface there are traces of the gilding that formerly covered it:
this lamp came from a mosque built in 1363. At South Kensington are two
small lamps of colourless glass of somewhat abnormal form without
decoration of any kind.
I must finally mention the charming little lamp from the Myers
collection (now at South Kensington) which, it is stated, was found in
a Christian monastery in Syria (Plate XXXIV. 1). The thin clear glass,
with pearly patina, the graceful, vase-like form, and, above all, the
sparingly applied but quite exceptional decoration, in which the human
figure finds a place, distinguish this lamp from the ordinary Cairene
type. In this case the treatment of the figures, which, as I have said,
are never found on true mosque lamps, closely resembles that on the
inlaid metal-ware made at Mosul in the thirteenth century.[124]
And this carries us back to the question of the origin of this
enamelled glass, and we are brought face to face with quite a number of
interesting problems which can only be indicated here. That the
application of enamels to glass by the Saracens was prior to the use of
similar materials on porcelain by the Chinese, I have already
mentioned. It is, indeed, not impossible that this method of decoration
may have been suggested to the Chinese potters by specimens of the
Saracenic glass which, as we now know, found their way to China at an
early date. The use of enamels of very similar constitution on metals
had, however, been known in certain parts of Europe since the first
century of our era if not earlier, and the cloisonné enamels of the
Byzantines had long been famous. In this connection, too, we must not
forget the _vitrum plumbeum_ with which the Syrian Jews manufactured
artificial gems. It is to materials of this kind, true lead-fluxed
enamels, that we must look for the origin of the decoration on
Saracenic glass, rather than to the paint-like colours occasionally
used by the Romans and Byzantines.
We may safely associate the apparently sudden appearance of this richly
decorated enamelled glass with the change that came over the other arts
of the Saracens about this time, and Dr. Lane-Poole is probably right
in connecting this change with the rise of the Kurdish and Tartar
families who played so important a part in the history of the twelfth
and thirteenth centuries (_Art of the Saracens_, p. 127 _seq._).
Nur-ed-din, who ruled at Damascus and Aleppo in the twelfth century,
came from the stock of the Beni Zenky, who adorned their coinage with
figure subjects taken from both Byzantine and Persian sources. His
successor, the great Saladin, came of the Ayubi stock that had ruled in
Mesopotamia. Both families brought with them the traditions of
Sassanian art and a complete freedom from the religious scruples of the
earlier Semitic rulers. A little later the great Monghol invasion of
Genghis Khan, who founded a new dynasty in Persia, opened the way to
other influences, this time from the Far East. During all this period,
the civilisation of the Frankish West was fighting its way into
Palestine and Northern Syria. It would be difficult to find a parallel
case in history—a case, I mean, of as many exotic influences as were
now brought to bear upon Syria and Egypt, at work at the same time and
in the same country. In both lands one result was an outburst of
artistic splendour. This, in the first country, came to a premature end
with Timur’s devastating campaign. In Egypt this glorious period lasted
somewhat longer; but already in the fifteenth century the Memlook
sultans had returned to the stricter rule of the faith, and by the next
century, when after a period of turmoil Egypt fell under Turkish rule,
the short-lived art of enamelling on glass was already extinct.
How completely this was so we may learn from an interesting document
discovered some time since by the late M. Yriarte in the Venetian
archives—amid the inexhaustible store now preserved in the old convent
behind the Frari Church (_La Vie d’un Patricien de Venise au XVI^{me}
Siècle_, p. 147 _seq._). In the year 1569, Marc Antonio Barbaro—that
type of a Venetian noble, the liberal patron of artists and
writers—was ambassador at Constantinople. The document in question is
a despatch addressed by him to the Venetian senate; on it he has drawn
in outline two designs for lamps—one a somewhat depressed version of
our old mosque type, the other what M. Yriarte calls a ‘godet-lampe’ of
elongated form,—in fact, a version of our ‘spear-butt’ or cup-lamp
suitable for fitting into a wooden or metal frame. Barbaro urges the
senate to see to the execution at Murano, with the greatest care, of as
many as nine hundred pieces after these designs, for the demand came
from no less a person than the Grand Vizier himself. There is no
reference, in the order for these lamps, to any enamelling: those that
are not plain (_schietti_) are to be decorated in the Venetian way (_a
reticelli_).[125]
The old form was, however, kept up in those beautiful mosque lamps of
fayence, Rhodian or Damascan in style, of which we have a few rare
examples in our museums; these, I think, were made in the days of
Turkish rule, in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.
I shall return in a subsequent chapter to the later glass of the
Mohammedans—that of Persia and of India—glass that was for the most
part influenced by Venetian models, in part even made by Venetian
workmen: it would be hardly possible to treat of this glass before we
have said something of its European prototype. We know practically
nothing of any mediæval Saracenic glass other than the enamelled ware
of Syria and Egypt. The little bowl of amber-yellow glass in the
British Museum, enamelled with the figure of an angel, was considered
by Franks to be Persian ware of the fifteenth century (Plate XXVII. 1).
With it we may compare the already mentioned sphere from a lamp-chain
in the same collection which is of very similar glass. The decoration
of the first object is distinctly Persian, but its origin may be
sought, perhaps, in the Tabriz district or even further north in
Georgia, rather than in the more southern and eastern districts where,
under Venetian influence, a glass industry sprang up in later days.
[Illustration:
_PLATE XXVII_
DRINKING BOWL
PERSIAN OR SYRIAN. FIFTEENTH OR SIXTEENTH CENTURY
SPHERICAL ORNAMENT FOR ATTACHMENT TO CHAIN
SUSPENDING MOSQUE LAMP
PERSIAN OR SYRIAN. PROBABLY FIFTEENTH CENTURY]
A few fragments of glass have been brought from excavations made on the
site of the old city of Rhé, or Rhages, which was destroyed by Hulaku
Khan in 1250. But there is little to be found among these that has any
bearing upon the interesting question of a mediæval Persian glass
industry, nor do I think that the evidence of so early a date for all
these fragments is by any means conclusive. In the rubbish-heaps of
Fostat or Old Cairo, which, like those of Rhé, have yielded so many
interesting potsherds that throw light on the early history of pottery,
many pieces of glass have been found, among them some fragments of
bracelets. These are of two types, in one case of the primitive Hebron
character, in the other built up of twisted rods of _reticelli_
glass,—these last may undoubtedly be referred to Venice. For the rest,
these Fostat fragments point to a local manufacture of somewhat rough
glass of brilliant hues, but the enamelled glass of which we have
treated in this chapter is, as far as I have had opportunity of
judging, conspicuous by its absence.