THE GLASS OF GERMANY
The Green Glass of the Rhine and the Netherlands—Enamelled Glass
It is as a matter of practical convenience that I have chosen not to
make a separate division for the ‘green glass’ of the Dutch of the
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Not that Holland was in any way
dependent on Germany in this matter, but in the case of this, the first
of the three main divisions of German glass of which I have to treat in
this and the following chapters—the plain or prunted green glass—the
produce of the two countries is very similar. Our second group—the
family of enamelled glass, so important in Germany—is scarcely
represented at all in Holland. On the other hand, in the case of our
third group, the Dutch struck out a line of their own. I shall
therefore treat of the engraved glass of Holland in a subsequent
chapter.
It is remarkable how little is known of the nature of the glass made in
Germany before the first half of the sixteenth century, when the
Italian influence began to make itself felt. A few insignificant little
bowls and some small flasks that have served as reliquaries have been
preserved in the treasuries of German churches (Plate XXI.), but for
our principal source of information we are dependent upon contemporary
pictures. Here, however, we soon discover that it is rather to works of
the early Netherlandish school that we must turn for information, and
that even from this source practically nothing is to be gleaned until
about the second quarter of the fifteenth century. What is then found
is not of much note, small tumbler-like vessels for the most part, of
thick greenish glass decorated with threadings or studs, the latter
more or less of the nature of prunts. There is, however, one
fifteenth-century form which is of some interest: the metal-mounted
wooden cups of mazer-like form, in use at that time appear to have been
copied in glass; these may be recognised by their peculiar stunted and
sometimes coiled handles.[184]
These somewhat primitive vessels of the fifteenth century are of
interest as leading the way to the first important division of German
glass, the ‘Green Glass’ of Western Germany and the Netherlands.[185]
It is worthy of note that this family of glass, essentially of local
origin not only as regards the nature of the metal but also in respect
of the shape and the method of decoration, only reached its full
development in the course of the sixteenth century, at a time when the
new _cristallo_ was being made by Italian workmen in the same district.
There must have been something like a conscious reaction in favour of
the native forms and materials. As to the pronounced green colour, we
know that this was held to enhance the flavour of the wine drunk from
the glass; as far back as the early sixteenth century, iron and copper
scale were purposely added to supplement the pale tint given by the
iron contained in the impure native potash (Mathesius, _Sarepta_,
cxciv.).
In the decoration of this green glass recourse was had to the old
methods of threading, but above all to the more or less circular
projections or bosses of varied forms that are found scattered over the
sides. These are technically known as ‘prunts’—the _nuppen_ of the
Germans. We have had something to say of one special form of these
protuberances when describing the glass of the Anglo-Saxons.[186] These
prunts fall into two groups: the _stechel-nuppen_ or thorned prunts, of
which the old Franco-Saxon form is an extreme type; and the
_beeren-nuppen_ or berry prunts, derived possibly in the first case
from the moulded reliefs of bunches of grapes that we find so often on
Roman glass. A third group might perhaps be made for another classical
form where the projections take the shape of a medallion—a head
stamped on the surface of the prunt while it is still soft.
These _nuppen_ had a practical use,—so Mathesius, a contemporary
writer, tells us.[187] They were to prevent the glass from slipping
between the fingers of the drinker. With a similar object—for the
_insertion_ of the fingers in this case—these prunts are sometimes
reversed, forming deep pits in the sides of the vessel. There is a late
example of this form at South Kensington and another in the British
Museum. The _stechel-nuppen_ may assume less aggressive forms; the
points may be smoothed down while the metal is soft, and we then have
merely a series of disc-like thickenings on the sides of the glass. By
this means, as in the more refined Dutch _roemer_ of the seventeenth
century, effects of great beauty, due to the varying transparency of
the glass, were obtained.
In colour this Rhenish glass may vary from a greenish-blue to a pale
bottle-green, or again to a deep, almost black, tint of olive-green or
violet. It is from glass of this description that the pale-coloured
wines of the country have been drunk, perhaps without break, from late
Roman times. This it is, as well as the fact that it has never been
decorated with enamel, and rarely, in Germany at least, by the wheel or
with the diamond, that has given to the green prunted glass of this
family a position apart. I have called this glass Rhenish, inasmuch as
the centre of the manufacture seems to have been around Cologne, whence
some of it found its way down the river to the Low Countries, along
with the wine that was drunk from it; but much green glass was, we
know, made also in the Netherlands.
From the _cultur-historisch_ point of view, perhaps the most striking
claim to attention of this family of German glass lies in the fact that
here we come across the one original and artistic form of wine-glass
that has been developed in modern times—apart, that is, from the
stemmed glass of Italian origin, about which there will be a good deal
to say in a future chapter. The typical _roemer_—for this of course is
the glass of which I am speaking—consists of three parts: a bowl of
ovoid outline, shaped like the flower of a tulip; a hollow cylindrical
stem, studded with mulberry-like prunts (often flattened out to discs);
and a hollow conical foot, formed by coiling a rope of glass round a
core of wood (Plate XXXVII.). Here we have the _roemer_ in the fully
developed form of the seventeenth century, as we see it in fact in the
still-life pictures of the Dutch painters of the time, or again—this
time in actual use—in the marksmen’s banquets (_schuttersmaaltyd_) of
Van der Helst and Frans Hals. In the earlier forms, however, the foot
is either entirely missing or is present only as a zig-zag or toothed
ring of glass applied to the base of the stem. In these early examples
again the broad hollow stem is not divided from the bowl by a diaphragm
of glass, but forms an integral part of the cup.[188] On the other
hand, before the end of the seventeenth century the cylindrical stem
was more and more encroached upon by the spun-foot, while the coiled
threading with which in earlier days the conical foot was entirely
built up was, in late examples, twisted round a glass support so as to
become a mere ornament[189] (Czihak, _Schlesische Gläser_, pp. 75
_seq._, and Hartshorne, _English Glasses_, pp. 66 _seq._).
[Illustration: _PLATE XXXVII_
ROEMER OF GERMAN GREEN GLASS
ABOUT 1600, A.D.]
Of the Rhenish green glass, the only other forms that I shall mention
are the upright barrel-shaped beaker covered with prunts of various
forms, in which the _Mai-trank_, a kind of ‘cup,’ was brewed, and
finally the _Krautstrunk_ or cabbage-stalk, a tall cylindrical glass
bristling with formidable thorny prunts. Mathesius, who is responsible
for the picturesque name, already in the seventeenth century calls the
_Krautstrunk_ an old form. The form is indeed noticeable, for among
this family of green glass it is the only important instance of the
cylindrical shape so much in favour for the enamelled ware.
The green glass as a group is very poorly represented in our London
museums; as I have said, it can best be studied in the works of the
Dutch painters. The handsome _roemer_ in Jan van de Velde’s still-life
piece (National Gallery, No. 1255) may be taken as a typical example.
VENETIAN INFLUENCE IN GERMANY
We must now turn again to the glass of Venice, and consider how far and
in what direction its influence can be traced upon that made in the
north. This much we know—that in the fifteenth century, and perhaps
earlier, the Venetian glass was largely imported into Germany, and this
not only on the backs of hawkers, for the large Venetian firms had
agencies in many German cities.[190] There were at that time depôts of
the Venetian merchants at such comparatively remote places as the
Silesian towns of Görlitz and Breslau, and early in the fifteenth
century the Italian glass was sold in the market-place of Vienna. At
this time, however, we are unable to trace any influence these
importations may have had upon the local German glass—of this last,
indeed, practically nothing is known. It would seem that it was not
until the sixteenth century was well advanced that any attempt was made
in Germany to compete with the Venetian _cristallo_. Like the mediæval
glass of France and England, the earlier German glass was doubtless a
mere household ware, of all descriptions the least likely to be
preserved.
It was in Southern Germany—in Switzerland and Swabia, and still more
in the wealthy towns of Augsburg, Regensburg, and Nuremberg—that the
Italian influence, in the matter of glass as in the other departments
of the arts, was most strongly felt. As early as 1531 the town council
of Nuremberg granted a subsidy to promote the introduction of the
Venetian methods of making glass. We are told that Augustin Hirschvogel
(_d._ 1560), a member of the well-known family of glass-stainers, some
of whom we shall meet again before long, was interested in the
question, and, according to one account, he learned the secrets of the
art at Murano. In any case, there exist specimens of what is
undoubtedly German glass, decorated with coats-of-arms of local
families, both the shapes and the enamelling of which carry us back to
the Venetian enamelled glass of the early sixteenth century. Good
examples of this ware may be found in the richly enamelled pilgrims’
flasks, of which there are examples in the Germanic Museum at Nuremberg
and in the British Museum. In such specimens the Italian influence is
seen not only in the beadings and the gilding, but in the nature of the
metal itself. How strong this southern influence was in these parts in
the second half of the sixteenth century we may see in the work of the
contemporary goldsmiths. In the case of glass, however, the purely
Italian forms seem to have been early abandoned, and the same may be
said of the style of the enamels employed in the decoration.
Of a later time than these South German examples of enamelled ware are
the even more definite copies of the sixteenth-century glass of Venice
that were made in the neighbourhood of Cologne. Here we have deliberate
imitations of the Italian models—tall-stemmed glasses of thin
_cristallo_ with wide-winged handles, the latter often of deep blue
metal. There is a row of these _flügel-gläser_, as the Germans call
them, arranged on an upper shelf in the British Museum; some of these
may perhaps be referred to the glass-house at Dessau, where Italians
were employed between 1679 and 1686, but as a whole such glasses must
be of a somewhat earlier date than this. In any case, we must regard
these _flügel-gläser_ as exotic growths, which lie quite apart from the
two great German groups of the seventeenth century—I mean, of course,
the enamelled and the engraved glass.
In fact, the real influence of the new _cristallo_ of Venice was
exerted in another direction. People who had seen this clear white
glass were no longer content with the thick heavy metal of varying hues
of green, blue, and yellow, often full of bubbles and defects. Already
early in the sixteenth century in various parts of Germany attempts
were made to introduce the Venetian methods of working, above all the
Venetian materials. Now the Germans of that day were a practical
people, already well ahead in many of the technical arts, above all in
those relating to mining, to the smelting of metals, and to the _arts
du feu_ generally. After a moment of hesitation, instead of merely
copying the formulas that they learned from the Italians, they adapted
them to the conditions of their own country, and thus were soon able,
in the central mountain districts among a population of miners and
woodmen, to establish a glass industry quite independent of foreign
aid. In France, on the other hand, and still more in England, up to the
end of the seventeenth century, whatever glass of artistic character
was produced was made for the most part by foreign workmen, and to some
extent with foreign materials. Perhaps the most striking instance of
the independent line taken by the German glass-workers may be found in
the continued use of potash made from the beechwoods of their forests,
and with this alkali they were soon able to produce a glass as
brilliant and colourless as the soda-made _cristallo_ of the south.
So far we have only got to the fringe of our subject; for the green
glass of the Rhine and Holland can in no way be regarded as
characteristic of German glass as a whole. Such glass I would rather
class as Lotharingian, using that term for that central land that is
neither French nor quite German. In so doing I am of course treading on
delicate ground; but I am prepared to maintain that it is rather in a
heavily enamelled _willkomm-humpen_ of plain cylindrical form from
Saxony or Franconia than in a prunted _roemer_ of green glass that we
have a really characteristic type of the glass of Germany.
And this brings us to the question, to how much of this Central German
glass the term Bohemian may be fairly applied? This at least may be
safely said, that the expression ‘German glass from the Bohemian
frontier’ would cover nearly the whole of it. What it is essential to
remember is that with the exception of a small section of the engraved
glass we have little to do with Prague and the Czecs of the central
plateau of Bohemia. As a whole this glass was made by German-speaking
people dwelling on either side of the mountains which gird Bohemia to
the north-east, the north-west, and the south-west, and divide that
kingdom from Silesia, from Saxony, and from Bavaria respectively. Of
all these districts it may be said that wherever the pines and beeches
of the wooded slopes provided both fuel for the furnaces and (from
their ashes) the indispensable potash, wherever, too, from the
hillsides a pure white sand could be extracted, and finally, wherever
in the mountain streams a source of power for cutting the wood or
grinding the glass was at hand, there a glass furnace would sooner or
later be established.
Starting from the gorge of the Elbe above Dresden, to the east a
complicated system of mountains covers the frontiers of Bohemia and
Silesia. In the valleys that run down on either side glass has been
made from the fourteenth century, if not before. It must not be
forgotten that until it was seized by Frederick the Great in the
eighteenth century Silesia had long been a dependence of the crown of
Bohemia.[191]
To the west, beyond the gorge of the Elbe, the high plateau of Misnia
falls abruptly on the Bohemian side, forming the Erzgebirge. Although
for the glass of this district, the classical land of mining and
metallurgy, we have no modern work to fall back upon, yet in the
sixteenth century it produced two important writers on metallurgy and
mining—Georg Agricola, the learned professor of chemistry, and the
Lutheran divine Mathesius. Both of these writers have something to say
upon the contemporary processes of glass-making.
At the western extremity of the Erzgebirge, on the one hand the
Fichtelgebirge forms a link joining those mountains to the Thüringer
Wald—these are both essentially German forest districts where much
glass was made; on the other hand the Böhmer Wald runs south-east to
the Danube. On the southern slopes of the latter range was made much of
the glass that supplied the rich Franconian and Bavarian cities.
And the mention of these towns brings us to this difficult question:
How far was the enamelling and the engraving of the finer specimens
carried out in the mountain valleys where the glass was made, and how
far in the workshops of the cities to which the undecorated glass had
been transported?
For the northern districts at least Herr von Czihak has brought forward
much evidence to show that the artists in the local towns carried back
to the mountain furnaces, to be there fired, the glass that they had
painted with enamel colours, and that even the finer kinds of engraving
were done in the upland villages where water-power was abundant. This
was certainly the case in later days in the famous centre of
glass-engraving that grew up at Warmbrunn, in the Hirschberg district
of Silesia. On the other hand much glass was, it would seem, enamelled
in Dresden, and in the south the finer work both of the enameller and
the glass-engraver was probably executed in the studio of the
artist—at Nuremberg, for instance, or in other Franconian or Swabian
towns.
For the German glass of the sixteenth century we have fortunately the
two already mentioned contemporary writers, both of them Saxons by
birth—Georg Agricola and Johann Mathesius. Agricola, it is true, ‘the
founder of the sciences of mineralogy and metallurgy,’ in his famous
work _De Re Metallica_,[192] devotes only a few pages at the end of his
last chapter to the subject of glass; but here may be found the first
accurate drawing of a glass furnace that has come down to us. Agricola
mentions that he had passed two years at Venice, and had seen much of
the glass-working when there.[193] Indeed, what he says of the
materials, of the source of the alkali above all, seems to have
relation to the Italian rather than to the German glass.
[Illustration:
_PLATE XXXVIII_
GERMAN GLASS FURNACE
SIXTEENTH CENTURY. FROM AGRICOLA]
But this is not the case with the furnaces, which he describes and
illustrates. Agricola distinguishes three separate ovens: the fritting
oven; the main oven, where the glass is melted in pots; and an
annealing oven for slowly cooling the glass. These ovens, however, may
be combined in various ways in smaller works, reducing the number to
two or even to one. The fritting oven is a detached building of beehive
shape, which is also used for annealing the pots. The main oven, eight
feet in height and ten feet in diameter, is of a similar outline. The
wood is burned on the floor of a lower chamber, without any grating of
firebars; the flame passes through into an upper chamber, around which
are arranged eight pots, each two feet in height, with a working-hole
in front of each pot. From the back of this chamber a passage opens
which conveys the heated gases to the quadrangular annealing oven.
Surely so much information has rarely been compressed into one print as
we find in the main illustration to this part of Agricola’s text (Plate
XXXVIII.). Here at one working-hole (_fenestrella_) we see a workman
gathering the glass at the end of his _fistula_ or blowing-iron,
another is shaping the gathering upon the marver at his foot, a third
is vigorously blowing the _paraison_ to the required size, and a fourth
is swinging another round his head. On the ground lie scattered moulds
of various forms, and here, too, we may discover the forceps
(_pucella_) used in shaping the glass. To the right, in the foreground,
lies a large wooden case closely packed with glass vessels of various
shapes: we can distinguish, I think, bottles, alembics, and some
prunted cylinders, which may well be the _Krautstrünke_ of Mathesius.
Above, to the right, the itinerant hawker marches off with a fresh
supply of glass of all shapes arranged in an open-work crate strapped
on his back. Finally, to the left, in a little office, the master
discusses business with a customer over a foaming glass of beer—this
last a truly German trait.
Our other source of information for the German glass of the sixteenth
century is found, of all places in the world, in a collection of
so-called sermons written by the friend, table-companion, and
biographer of Luther—Johann Mathesius (1504-1565). Mathesius, after
leaving Wittenberg, settled as pastor at Joachimsthal, a famous mining
centre on the southern slopes of the Erzgebirge. These _Sermons for
Miners_[194] are a strange mixture of what to us seem fantastic
analogies drawn from the Bible, with matter of an eminently practical
nature relating to the crafts and occupations of his audience. The
title of his fifteenth sermon will give some idea of how he treats the
subject:—‘Of glass and the making of glass, and passages where it is
mentioned in the Holy Writings, and how we may thereby call to mind
both the fragility of our present bodies and the clearness and
brilliancy of our bodies in the future state.’
A careful perusal of what both these writers have to say on the
manufacture of glass leaves the general impression that in the first
half of the sixteenth century Germany had not made much progress in
that art. It is to Venice, in the first place, and then to Antwerp,
that Mathesius turns for brilliant examples. At Murano, he tells us,
they can actually make panes of glass ‘through which from one’s room
one can see all that is passing in the street.’ So too, he says, it is
in that town and in Antwerp that is made the finest _schmelzglas_ of
all colours used by the goldsmith—above all the mysterious
_ritzkel_.[195]
‘Now,’ says Mathesius, ‘we come to the German glass-houses. Some have
their own sand, others pound white quartz and pebbles. They make use of
the ashes of oak, maple, beech, and pine; the ashes of the fir and of
the willow turn out good work, but from their fatty nature yield glass
that is not so white. Native salt is added also to the sand and ashes,
but the Polish rock-salt is more advantageous. Many buy up broken glass
and make with it the best work.’[196] If you wish, continues Mathesius,
to obtain white and pure glass, it is essential to use only well dried
wood, for green wood makes the glass opaque and blackish. The metal
should be cooled more than once and remelted, the glass-gall being
carefully skimmed off each time. If you propose to make fair and pure
glass, ‘neither bubbly, feathery, cloudy, dull, stony, or gritty,’
prepare your frit carefully by rabbling and turning over the mixture of
sand, potash, and salt on the floor of the first furnace, in the same
way as metallic ores are treated ‘when they are roasted by the valuable
new process.’ (Whatever this may have been, it was an illustration that
would appeal to his audience of miners.) When the mixture begins to
sinter together, the stuff should be shovelled into cold water. The
frit thus prepared is then placed in the melting-pots and gradually
heated.
There then follows a careful account of the various processes involved
in the blowing and shaping of the vessel: of this I will only remark
that there is no mention in it of the use of the shears for trimming
the rough edges of the glass—technically an important point.
ENAMELLING ON GERMAN GLASS
We are now able to form some idea of the processes by which glass was
made in Central Germany about the middle of the sixteenth century, and
when we come to examine the glass itself by the aid of extant examples,
it will be found that this is indeed the date from which the start must
be made, for there are few pieces in our collections that can claim a
greater antiquity.
It was apparently not long before this time that the Germans began to
apply enamels to their drinking-vessels whether of glass or pottery.
Mathesius (1562) speaks of enamelling as a new art. ‘The ready wit of
man,’ he says, ‘is always finding something new; some have on the white
glass painted all kinds of pictures and mottoes, and burnt them in, in
the annealing oven,[197] as we find the “counterfeits” of great men and
their arms _painted upon the panes that are set in our windows_.’ This
is an important passage which confirms what we might otherwise be led
to infer—namely, that the origin of the enamelling that we find on the
beakers of the German renaissance must be sought, not in the fifteenth
and early sixteenth century enamelled glass of Venice, but rather in
the new method of colouring window-glass that was at this time
spreading all over Germany. I refer to the highly finished pictures,
_painted in enamel colours_ on white glass and subsequently burned in,
which were now replacing, especially for secular use, the true
lead-mounted stained glass of the old church windows. It was an easy
step to apply this method of decoration to the cylindrical surfaces of
the great tankards and goblets from which the German people drank their
beer. Now it is not in Northern or Central Germany that we find the
best specimens of these enamelled ‘quarries.’ The finest examples come
from the south, from Nuremberg, from Swabia, and above all from
Switzerland, at that time the home of a distinguished school of glass
painters. And the same may be said of the glasses, though this is a
point that has been somewhat neglected until quite lately. Both the
_willkomm-humpen_ and the _pass-gläser_—the broad and narrow
cylinders—found in Swiss and Bavarian collections are, as a rule, much
more carefully decorated than the quaint but rude glasses of what we
must vaguely call the central district. Unfortunately we have no means
of more definitely determining the place of origin of the latter class
of beakers; in fact it may be said generally of the glass made on both
sides of the mountains that encircle Bohemia, that there is little to
distinguish the productions of the different centres, however far apart
they may lie.
[Illustration:
_PLATE XXXIX_
GERMAN GLASS. WILLKOMM HUMPEN. ENAMELLED WITH THE EAGLE OF EMPIRE
SEVENTEENTH CENTURY]
Now it is not too much to affirm that, as a whole, the enamelling on
German glass is in every way bad. The colours are opaque; when not
crude they are muddy and dull. It is almost too high praise of them to
say that they look as if they had been painted on in oil-colours. Take,
for example, an average _adler-humpen_, such a one as the big beaker in
the British Museum (Slade, No. 835). A mustardy yellow, that takes the
place of the gilding that is absent in the main painting, is
predominant; there is then an opaque blue, crude and unpleasant, and a
dull maroon, which—and this is universally the case on these
glasses—is the nearest approach we get to red. Apart from these
colours we find only browns and drabs of undecided tints. So much for
the main decoration; but if we now look carefully we find round the
neck something that takes us back to Venice—a delicate scale pattern
of fine powdered gold, and above this a line of beading with little
pearls of various colours. This band of exotic ornament is seldom
absent, at least in the earlier specimens.[198]
There is no need to say much of the shapes of these enamelled glasses,
for they are almost invariably of a more or less cylindrical form, with
a foot of the simplest character; covered glasses are comparatively
rare. They may be divided for our purpose into the broader beakers
(often with curved sides and sometimes of great capacity) on the one
hand, and on the other the narrower straight-sided tall cylinders. Much
ingenuity has been devoted by German writers to the identification of
the names by which these glasses were known in the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries, and they have attempted to distinguish between
the _spechter_, the _bröderlein_, the _Krautstrunk_, the _pass-glas_,
the _humpen_ and the _willkomm_. On the other hand, the term
_wiederkomm_ or _vidrecome_, given by so many English and French
writers to the large broad forms, is unknown in Germany, so that I
think the expression may be definitely abandoned and replaced by the
word _humpen_ or _willkomm humpen_. _Narren-gläser_—fools’
glasses—says Mathesius, would be a better name for these huge beakers
that a man can hardly lift. The tall, narrow cylindrical form, when
divided by horizontal lines, is known as a _pass-glas_. The _spechter_
of Mathesius has been identified with a glass of this shape, sometimes
decorated with square nail-headed studs. These _spechter_ came from the
Spessart forest district (west of Würzburg), and they form, as it were,
a link between the prunted green glass of the Rhine and the enamelled
beakers of Central Germany.
There is a small group of enamelled glass of very uncertain origin
which claims attention here. We are concerned with certain little
ewers, either of colourless or more often of deep cobalt-blue glass;
they are generally mounted in metal, but the handle is always of glass.
There are several examples of these ewers in the British Museum, many
of which bear dates ranging from 1577 to 1618. The cobalt-blue glass
has, by Dr. Brinckmann, been traced back to the glass-houses of Neudeck
Platten, on the Saxon-Bohemian frontier. In the treatment, however, of
the enamels on these little jugs, we are reminded of some of the work
executed by the Altarists in France. The enamelling is of a somewhat
more pleasing character than that which we find on the big beakers;
white, yellow, green, and red are applied without shading. A favourite
subject is a stag-hunt or the coursing of a hare, and at the side is
often found a graceful lily of the valley[199] (Plate XL. 2).
[Illustration:
_PLATE XL_
ENAMELLED BEAKER
GERMAN, ABOUT 1600
ENAMELLED JUG WITH PEWTER LID
GERMAN, END OF SIXTEENTH CENTURY]
To return to our broad cylindrical glasses—the huge _humpen_ and the
smaller _kanne_, both of which indeed sometimes take the form of a
barrel or a truncated cone—it is usual, on the basis of the
decoration, to divide these beakers into the following classes:—
1. The _Reichs-adler Humpen_. On these, the double-headed eagle,
displayed, with imperial crown, occupies nearly the whole surface of
the glass. A big crucifix covers the breast of the bird, though this is
replaced in some examples by the ball of empire. The arms of the seven
electors and of the forty-eight members of the _Heilige Römische Reich_
are arranged in a definite order along the outstretched wing
feathers[200](Plate XXXIX.).
2. The _Kur-fürsten Humpen_. Here, on the upper zone, the emperor on
horseback rides in front of the three spiritual electors—the four lay
princes follow below. In other cases the kaiser sits on his throne,
with the electors on either side.[201]
3. The Fichtelgebirge glasses, on which a mountain landscape is rudely
indicated. None of these glasses can be attributed to an earlier date
than the second half of the seventeenth century. A good example in the
British Museum shows the Ochsenkopf, one of the highest peaks of the
district, as well as the four rivers that issue from its slopes. A
padlock hanging by a gold chain over the mountain points to the
treasures therein contained: as an often-repeated inscription
says:—_An Eisen, Erz und Holz, thut mann viel von ihm ziehen_. Many of
these beakers, and perhaps others of a similar character, may be
referred to the glass-houses of Bischofsgrün, which are situated at the
foot of the Ochsenkopf.
In spite of the crudity of the enamels and the rudeness of the design,
it is impossible to deny that there is a certain attraction in the
intensely German character of the decoration on these three groups of
glasses, which thus form a class by themselves. They smack of the soil
and of the simple German folk who made them. The earliest example
known, an _adler-humpen_, is dated 1547, and differs little in the
quality of the enamel from the later specimens, which range down to the
beginning of the eighteenth century.[202]
There are in the British Museum two remarkable tankards which, though
they do not fall under any of the above divisions, may well be
mentioned here. On one we see an elaborate hunting scene: in the centre
the net is spread and the game is being driven in by dogs and beaters
(Plate XLI.). On the other is a strangely crude representation of the
Last Supper, in the arrangement of which, however, Leonardo’s famous
design may still be traced.
[Illustration: _PLATE XLI_
GERMAN GLASS. WILLKOMM HUMPEN. ENAMELLED WITH HUNTING SCENES
ABOUT 1600, A.D.]
Before treating of the big glasses painted at Dresden and of those of
the South German school, I may well say something of the second class
of cylindrical vessels, of which the most important sub-division is
formed by the _pass-gläser_, the tall narrow beakers divided by
stringings of glass or by enamelled rings into a series of zones. These
glasses played an important part in the drinking contests of the time.
It would seem—to judge from the lengthy verses, commencing and ending
in all cases with the word _vivat_, found on many of them—that it was
required of the drinker to swallow at one draught the liquid contents
of each zone, neither more nor less. At other times the drinking was
apparently regulated by the dealing of cards. There is a remarkable
example of the typical _pass-glas_ at South Kensington: it is divided
into twelve zones by quilled threadings of glass. The simple decoration
of hearts, roses, and wreaths, as well as the long inscription, is
painted in white enamel.
A somewhat later group of enamelled glasses may be traced to Dresden,
to the _Hof-kellerei_ of the Saxon electors, whose arms these glasses
bear. The painting on them, though of no great artistic merit, is
somewhat less rude, more ‘urbane,’ in fact, than that on the previous
examples. They form, indeed, a transition to the carefully executed
Nuremberg glasses. There are several examples of these Saxon beakers in
the British Museum. A fine covered _willkomm_ (Slade, No. 843) bears
the portrait of the elector John George as well as of the four Saxon
dukes, all booted and spurred, and with plumed hats on their heads.
This beaker is dated 1656, the year of the elector’s death. Another, a
_pass-glas_ (Slade, No. 847), has the arms and initials of Augustus the
Strong, king of Poland (1697-1733); the four zones into which this
glass is divided, each holding about half a pint, are indicated by
numerals, calling to mind, says Mr. Nesbitt, the peg tankards of the
sixteenth century. Another example, dated 1658, also from the Slade
collection (No. 851), a goblet with the arms of the elector of Saxony,
encircled by the garter, is remarkable for the glass being externally
striped with opaque white bands in obvious imitation of the _vetro di
trina_. There is a somewhat obscure reference to German glass so
decorated in the often-quoted sermon of Mathesius, and of this passage
much has been made by German writers.[203] I doubt whether the
imitation was in any case more than superficial, and I do not think
that, at least before the middle of the seventeenth century, any
example of German glass can be pointed to which is really built up with
rods as in the case of the true Venetian lace glass.
There is a large class of painted beakers on which the decoration has
reference to the occupation of the original owner, and among these the
_zunft-becher_, the guild or corporation glasses, hold an important
place. These glasses date, without exception, from a comparatively late
time, when among the upper classes the new engraved crystal glass had
taken the place of the enamelled ware; already by the end of the
seventeenth century the latter had come to be regarded as somewhat
_bourgeois_ in character. However that may be, these _humpen_ bearing
the arms of the guilds and quaint representations of the trades and
industries are among the most interesting of their class. Many of these
_Innungs gläser_ are still preserved in the halls of the trade guilds.
Herr von Czihak mentions several instances of this in Breslau and other
Silesian towns.
In Southern Germany the Venetian influence was not only more early
felt, but, what is of greater importance, it continued in play for a
longer time, being continually renewed by fresh importations of the
Italian glass. The art-loving dukes of Bavaria, Albrecht V. and his
successor Wilhelm V., in the second half of the sixteenth century, did
much to promote the manufacture of glass on improved methods. Strangely
enough, however, we find that it was from Antwerp, not from Italy, that
the assistance came in the first case; and it was to compete with
Italian glass imported from Venice _by way of Antwerp_ that Bernhart
Schwarz, a glass-maker of the latter town, erected a furnace—at
Landshut, on the Isar. Scarpaggiato, the Venetian, who came later, was
engaged, in the first place, to make window-glass and mirrors. He is
stated, however, to have been a master of the art of making _vasi a
reticelli_ and _a ritorti_ of both white and coloured glass.
At Hall, near Innsbruck, some remarkable imitations of Venetian glass
were made in the third quarter of the sixteenth century. In the
Imperial Museum at Vienna there are many specimens of this Tyrolese
glass, much of it scratched with the diamond and heavily gilt. There
may be seen a goblet made by the art-loving Archduke Ferdinand, the
husband of Philippine Welser.
As I have already said, it was in the towns of South Germany—Swabian
and Ducal Bavarian—as well as in Switzerland, that the new art of
painting window-glass with enamel colours was carried to the highest
perfection, and we can trace the influence of this school of painters
upon the decoration of the enamelled beakers preserved in the museums
of Zürich, Munich, Augsburg, and other South German and Swiss cities.
But it is to the Franconian Nuremberg, which, though further to the
north, fell under the same influences, that we must turn to find the
most brilliant work of this southern school. Here we come upon the
family of the Hirschvogels, so many of whom during the course of the
seventeenth century were famed as designers of glass for windows, and
we have evidence from documents that have been preserved that the
younger members at least of the family painted on drinking-glasses with
enamel colours (Friedrich, _Alt-Deutsche Gläser_, p. 157).
It is chiefly on the ground of the coats-of-arms found on a few
examples that we are enabled to attribute to Nuremberg artists a
variety of enamelled glass which differs in many respects from the
heavily painted _humpen_ and _pass_ glasses of which I have been
speaking. In the British Museum may be seen certain tall cylindrical
beakers which may be taken as examples of this South German glass. The
metal is colourless but somewhat grey, and, as in the northern glasses,
a delicate scale pattern of gold with scattered pearls of enamel forms
a ring below the upper margin. But now we find the gold used freely in
the rest of the decoration also, replacing the coarse yellow enamel of
the northern beakers. The colours are purer and more effectively
combined, and we see among them a green of good quality. In the case of
the two beakers from the Slade collection in the British Museum, the
figure of Jacob Praun on one glass, on the other that of his wife,
stand detached in the field; there is no other decoration apart from
the heraldic bearings of this Nuremberg family (these are on the other
side of the glass) and the above-mentioned gold band. I may add that
the Nuremberg enamellers showed a superlative skill in the treatment of
these elaborate coats-of-arms backed with fluttering mantlings.
Of the larger _humpen_ and _pass_ glasses painted with allegorical or
sometimes comic subjects, we have no good examples in our English
collections. A beaker in the Germanic Museum at Nuremberg, showing the
ten ages of man in as many compartments, is an exceptionally good
example of such work. The drawing and composition of the subjects on
these larger South German glasses are carefully carried out—the
colouring, however, is generally poor; in the later examples, indeed,
it tends to pass over to the monochrome or _grisaille_ class, of which
I must say a word before finishing with these enamelled wares.
The school of _grisaille_ painters on drinking-glasses, founded towards
the middle of the seventeenth century by Johann Schaper, is in many
ways closely associated with the contemporary engravers on glass. Like
the latter, the _grisaille_ painters followed the pseudo-classical, the
‘Italianising’ style, rather than the old German traditions. Schaper,
who came from Harburg on the Elbe, settled in Nuremberg in 1640, and
died there in 1670. His manner of work, founded on copper-plate
engravings, was much admired at the time, and he is in the next century
mentioned among the famous artists of Nuremberg by Doppelmayr in his
_Nachricht von den Nürnbergischen Künstlern_. Schaper, he says, ‘_auf
die Trinkgläser ... gar delicat mahlte_,’ burning in his work
afterwards so successfully that he surpassed all his contemporaries. He
painted—round the sides of small tumblers and wine-glasses, for the
most part—landscapes, figures, and heraldic bearings, either in black
or a warm sepia, signing his work with his initials. There are some
small examples of the glass enamelled by him at South Kensington. The
large goblet in the British Museum (Slade, No. 860), painted with a
cavalry combat, is of a considerably later date, but it shows that
Schaper’s influence continued into the eighteenth century; in this
case, however, the _grisaille_ is heightened in places by touches of
colour. The tall _pass_-glass (Slade, No. 859), painted with an
elaborate procession celebrating the birth of a Bavarian prince,
belongs, on the other hand, to quite another school. It is dated 1662,
and Schaper’s influence had probably not reached Munich by that time.
PAINTED AND GILT GLASS
Before passing on to the many-sided subject of engraved and cut glass,
a word must be said of certain applications to glass of painting and
gilding which were much in favour in Germany in the seventeenth
century. I have here to deal with a miscellaneous class of objects;
indeed the chief connecting-link between them is the fact that the
decoration is in no case fixed by fire.
Single sheets of glass may be simply painted at the back, and ‘fixed’
by means of a transparent varnish. Such plates, painted with Biblical
or allegorical subjects, may be seen let into the panels of the
elaborately carved and inlaid cabinets of the time. It cannot be said
that the effect of this _pausch glas Malerei_, as it is sometimes
called in Germany, is very satisfactory. It is indeed merely a debased
variety of what used to be known in France as _verre églomisé_; the
term _fixé peint_ has also been used for work of this kind.
The gilding that was so plentifully applied to the German engraved
glass of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries was fixed by a ‘cold’
process, by simply attaching the gold-leaf by means of a varnish. For
the most part it is only when applied to the sunk part of an _incavo_
decoration that this gilding has survived.
The gilding, however, has been more effectually preserved in the case
of another cold process which came into vogue before the end of the
seventeenth century, and rapidly spread from Bohemia, or perhaps rather
from Silesia, to various parts of Germany. In the case of these
_zwischen gläser_ we are taken back to an old process, already known to
the Alexandrian Greeks. The plan adopted in no way differs in principle
from that made use of in the decoration of the beautiful bowls from
Canosa, now in the British Museum (see p. 46).[204] Very inferior to
these in artistic merit are the little footless tumblers, with designs
in gold, often hunting scenes, which seem to have been made on both
sides of the Silesian-Bohemian frontier before the end of the
seventeenth century. These are built up of two glasses, both somewhat
tapering and both cut into an equal number of perpendicular sides, so
that when the smaller of the two was inserted into the interior of the
larger the glasses fitted exactly, and could not rotate one upon the
other. The inner glass being somewhat the taller, we find the ring of
junction, which is generally concealed by a band of gold, about half an
inch or so below the top of the glass. The edges are so exactly
bevelled that this line of junction is barely perceptible even to the
touch. Before fitting the two glasses together, the inner one had been
coated on the outside with gold-leaf, and the design carefully engraved
on the gold with a steel point; while on the inside of the outer glass
a coating of old linseed oil or of varnish had been smeared. I should
add that a medallion of ruby glass, variously ornamented, is usually
found at the bottom of these tumblers inserted between the two layers
of glass, or sometimes replacing the base of the outer cylinder. These
glasses will not stand warm liquids: an example in the British Museum
is disfigured by some large flattened blisters, probably the result of
heat.[205] Glasses built up in this manner may of course be decorated
in other ways; the gold-leaf, for instance, may be replaced by silver
foil. Kunckel, of ruby-glass fame, describes a method in which the
inner glass is plainly gilt, while the outer one is painted on the
inside in imitation of precious marbles (_Ars Vitraria Experimentalis_,
1679). I have seen examples of this manner of decoration in German
museums.