ENGRAVED BEAKER. THE COVER WITH ENAMELLED METAL KNOB
GERMAN, EARLY EIGHTEENTH CENTURY
From other sources we hear that George Schwanhart the elder had three daughters, Sophia, Maria, and Suzanna, who devoted themselves to the engraving on glass of flowers and ornaments, and especially of those examples of calligraphy then so much in fashion. Sandrart, most ungallantly, fails to mention these ladies, who were his contemporaries.
Many other names of engravers on glass have been handed down to us,[[215]] but I will only mention Hermann Schwinger (1640-83), who was also a wood-carver and engraver on copper. We have in the British Museum (Slade, No. 883) a tall cup of thin white glass elaborately engraved with a Bacchic subject. Below, scratched by the diamond in small characters, may be read ‘Herman Schwinger, cristall schnider zu Nürnberg.’
There has been much discussion as to the nature of the improvements effected by the Schwanharts in the glass-cutting machinery. But before the end of the seventeenth century the arrangement of the wheels and the division of labour were probably on the whole established much in the manner that we find in local works in Bohemia at the present day. In a general way we may say that there has always been a distinction between the mechanical processes of grinding and polishing and the more delicate and artistic work of the engraver. In the latter case the work is done by pressing the glass against the edge of a minute copper wheel. On the other hand, the glass is ground down on a wheel of iron from three to eighteen inches in diameter, it is smoothed upon a stone wheel and finally polished upon one of wood, with the assistance in each case of suitable abrading mediums, whether emery, quartz sand, tripoli, or putty-powder.
As early as the seventeenth century these glas-schleifer were divided into several more or less independent groups. The eckigräber did the coarser work. It fell to them, in the first place, to remove all irregularities on the surface of the glass—for example, the rough projections left on the foot where the pontil had been attached—and more especially to make the cross cuttings required to form the facets, which at a later time were so much in vogue. The kugler were another class of workmen, who prepared the shallow circular or oval pits which play so important a part in the decoration.
The work of the actual engraver belongs more to the domain of art. The cutting in this case is effected by a little wheel of copper from a quarter inch to an inch in diameter, revolving rapidly at the end of a horizontal spindle, moved by a treadle. These little copper wheels are of various forms, and not the least part of the skill of the artist lies in the selection of the form most suitable for the work in hand. The decision as to the depth of the engraved line, and again as to which part should be polished and which left dull depends also upon his judgment. His difficulties are increased by the fact that he is unable to follow the progress of the work in hand, for not only has he to press the glass against the under surface of the wheel, but the part of the surface on which he is working remains covered by the emery or other abrading material employed (Von Czihak, pp. 136-139). It will be noticed that as a rule the incised parts are left unpolished and dull as they come from the wheel, and that the polishing is reserved for the little circular depressions, the kugeln, which then show out like jewels cut en cabochon.
We are apt to associate this engraved glass with Bohemia, but to say nothing of the highly finished and artistic work done at Nuremberg and Regensburg, it is probable that in no other district has the engraving and cutting of glass become so much a distinct industry as in the Silesian valleys that descend from the highest peaks of the Riesengebirge towards the town of Hirschberg. As early as the commencement of the seventeenth century we come across an Italian engraver on rock crystal in the service of the Freiherr von Schaffgotsch at Schloss Kynast, and at the same spot towards the end of the century, in the employ of the same family, we find Friedrich Winter, who has the credit of being the first in this district to apply water-power to the cutting and polishing of glass.
Soon after this time there are many complaints of the decadence and vulgarisation of the art. Thus in 1708 a writer in a commercial paper complains that the engraved glass, which formerly was only to be found on the table of people of quality, had now become ‘dirt-cheap,’ and that the art of the glass-cutter was brought into contempt by the hawkers of glasses who scoured nearly the whole of Europe with their engraved wares. Whole chestsful of these commoner glasses, the writer says, were sent to Spain, and found there a good market (quoted by Von Czihak, p. 129). Sandrart, it will be remembered, some years before this, had uttered a protest against the stimpler—the bungling, ignorant workmen—who were ruining the art, and now we find the same expression used in the diploma of the monopoly that was granted to the above-mentioned Winter in 1687 by Count Christoph Leopold of Silesia.