Spanish Glass
In the case of France we have seen how vast is the amount of documentary evidence concerning the glass of the renaissance, and how comparatively scanty on the other hand the in every way more satisfactory evidence to be drawn from the examination of existing specimens. Now in the case of Spanish glass these conditions are in some measure reversed. We here find the documentary evidence almost entirely wanting, but we in England, at any rate, have in the British Museum, and more especially at South Kensington, fairly extensive collections of glass from the Peninsula. I will not say that most of the examples are of any great artistic, still less of technical merit. Far too many pieces in the latter collection are but sorry imitations of debased French and English models of the eighteenth century, and even later times. But as we shall see, not a few types, earlier in style if not in actual date, may be distinguished, and these have a distinct local flavour.
This is the case above all with a class of rudely executed vessels that are found in the south of Spain—in Murcia, Andalucia, and Granada. The metal itself is of a primitive type, of various shades of green and bluish-green. Indeed, one of the points of interest in this South Spanish glass is to be found in the fact that it is essentially a glass of the people: it is a survival from mediæval times, and it thus throws light upon the long extinct verre de fougère or wald-glas that was made all over the west of Europe before the introduction of the Venetian cristallo. Not that this Spanish glass is necessarily of the inland or potash family; we are here in a Mediterranean country, and the alkali has probably been found in the native soda-holding barilla. The shapes taken by this rude glass of the south of Spain often resemble those found in the local pottery; one is reminded at times of the graceful water-jars that are indeed common to nearly all the Mediterranean coast. A Moorish origin has been found for some of these forms, but we may perhaps go further back and call them Byzantine. The most characteristic shape is a vase with spherical body and with a tall expanding neck in the form of a truncated cone; neck and body are united by a series of handles, often eight or more in number ([Plate XXXVI.]). Now not only these handles, with their upper and lower attachments worked while hot by the pincers into toothed and crested forms, but the whole of the appliqué ornaments of the vessel—the threadings and the rude floral reliefs—take one back to a very old plan of decoration. This was a style much in favour in later Roman times—it is one that is perhaps per se the most characteristic and natural of all methods of treating the surface of glass. A similar many-handled vase is a common type among the peasant pottery of the same districts of Southern Spain; on this we find the same ring of handles, while the appliqué threadings and rosettes of the glass are replaced by a similarly applied slip ornament. This pottery is still manufactured for local use, but I do not know whether any of the rude green glass is produced at the present day.
We have little or no information about the glass made in Spain during the Moorish domination. There is a vague tradition that the manufacture was carried on in Murcia and Andalucia, and Al Makari, the historian, states on the authority of an author of the thirteenth century, that Almeria was famous for its vessels of glass as well as for those of iron and copper.[[182]]
It is the district lying inland, some distance to the north of Almeria, that has long, probably from Moorish times, been the centre of the glass industry of the south of Spain;—this is especially true of Pinar de la Vidriera and of Castril de la Peña. At this latter town, Don Juan Riaño tells us, glass has been made from time without memory, and indeed is still made there. ‘A gallery one mile long which exists at the entry of the town from which sand has been extracted for this manufacture, gives an idea of the antiquity of this industry’ (Industrial Arts of Spain, p. 232).
There is only one other centre of the manufacture of glass in Spain that need detain us. This lies in the coast district of Catalonia, above all around Barcelona; for this town we have direct evidence of the manufacture as far back as the early part of the fourteenth century.[[183]] At this time the Catalan mariners were the boldest and the most skilful in the whole Mediterranean, and active rivals of the Venetians in the ports of the Levant. Now there is one variety of enamelled glass formerly attributed to Venice, which, as is at present generally acknowledged, has its origin in the Peninsula: much of it was made at Barcelona. The prevailing note of the enamel on this glass is a very beautiful apple-green, of two tints, one passing into yellow. This colour is sometimes found alone, at others associated with a few touches of other enamels—a lavender blue, for instance, but these other colours are of no great brilliancy. The green much resembles that found on the enamelled glass of the Saracens, where, however, this colour was always sparingly applied. The patterns on the Catalan glass are generally of a formal floral character, often built up of sprigs radiating from a centre. But technically the most noticeable point in this enamel is the method of its application. As in the case of the Saracenic glass, it is laid on with a loaded brush; it lies in thick semi-transparent masses on the surface. As a result we have a rich and jewel-like effect that we may look for in vain in the flat opaque painting that we see on so many European wares. There are several pieces of this glass in the British Museum, but the most beautiful example that I have seen is in the Museo Civico at Venice. This is a little flask lately acquired from the Maglione collection at Naples; the dominant green enamel is here relieved by some yellowish foliage and by red and white birds.
I do not think that any existing example of this green enamelled glass could be safely referred to an earlier date than the end of the fifteenth century. But it is not improbable that the Catalans learned the use of these enamels not from the Venetians, but directly from Saracenic or Jewish glass-workers in some of the ports of the Levant. Such a distant source for this decoration, which is indeed somewhat Oriental in character, I think more probable than a local one in Spain, for we have no evidence that the Moors, when they held the Peninsula, ever practised the art of enamelling glass, nor indeed were the Catalans, after very early times, ever brought much into contact with their Mohammedan neighbours: their main dealings were with the Levant.
That the glass of Barcelona was widely known and held in some repute before the end of the fifteenth century, the following notices go far to prove. As early as 1491—so it is stated in a contemporary Latin manuscript—glass vessels of various shapes, resembling those made at Venice, were exported to Rome from Barcelona. Again, when Philippe le Beau passed through the latter town in 1503, we are told that he went ‘en dehors de la ville veoire ung four ou faict voires de cristallin très beaus’ (Schuermans, Bulletin xxix. p. 138 seq.). Finally, Ferdinand of Aragon, about the same time, is reported to have sent to Queen Isabella a present of 274 pieces of glass manufactured in Barcelona. That this glass must have been possessed of some artistic merit we may infer from the fact that the Queen presented several pieces to the Capella de los Reyes at Granada. These we may perhaps identify with the vasi di vedro seen among the treasures of this chapel a few years later by the Venetian ambassador (Andrea Navagero, Viaggio in Spagna et in Francia). M. Gerspach, I may add, calls attention to an inventory drawn up during the reign of Philip II., in which, under the heading of bidrios de Barcelona, 119 pieces of glass of various forms are catalogued; among other things—and this is a point of great interest—mention is made of some enamelled lamps.
At a much later date, not before the eighteenth century probably, a good deal of opaque white glass, in imitation of porcelain, was made at Barcelona. At South Kensington may be seen a series of quadrangular flasks of this material with bevelled edges, about six inches in height. These flasks—they probably served to hold essences and spirits—are somewhat rudely painted with floral designs in bright primitive colours—red, blue, and yellow. Both in India and Persia we come across examples of glass decorated with ‘painted’ enamels, almost identical in shape and size with these Spanish bottles. Not only these, but some of the sherbet-jugs and coffee-cups of this milky glass, that are still often found in many parts of the East, may well have come from this district. It will be remembered, however, that a very similar ware was made about the same time both in France and at Venice.
Other towns in Catalonia, as Cervelló, Almatret, and above all Mataró, became famous for their glass in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. There is more than one record of distinguished foreign princes who were conducted in royal galleys to visit the glass-works of this last town.
M. Schuermans has discovered the names of more than twenty Italians from L’Altare or from Venice, who found their way to Spain, in some cases by way of Flanders. At Lisbon, too, in the seventeenth century, there were many foreign glass-makers, Muranese, Altarists, and Flemings.
At Cadalso, in the province of Toledo, glass-furnaces were at work as early as the beginning of the sixteenth century; indeed they are said at that time to have supplied the whole kingdom of Castile. At these works, at a somewhat later time, the Italian influence became very strong, and no doubt many Muranese or Altarists were employed.
Before the end of the seventeenth century, the general decline so noticeable in all the industries of Spain spread, it would seem, to the glass-works. Workmen were now obtained chiefly from the Low Countries, and in addition much glass was imported by sea from Antwerp. To how low a state the glass industry had fallen at this time may be inferred from the fact that orders for ‘Mexico and the Indies’ had to be executed abroad. In the next century, when Spain had lost her Flemish possessions, their place as a source of glass-ware was taken by France. Philip V., about the year 1720, founded a royal glass manufactory near his summer palace of La Granja de S. Ildefonso, and workmen were gathered together from all sources—there were Germans and Swedes as well as Frenchmen. These works were above all established, in rivalry to St. Gobain (p. [235]), for the preparation of large mirrors of plate-glass, but all sorts of ‘hollow ware’ were also produced there. This later Spanish glass, made to royal order, is, however, utterly devoid of any interest, and it need not detain us.
CHAPTER XVI
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.).
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.