On the other hand, certain bowls and vases of deep blue glass, decorated with floral designs in a solid gilding, have an almost unpleasantly modern air. A pair of vases so decorated, now in the British Museum, came, however, from the Strawberry Hill collection, and they may well date from the early eighteenth century.
Finally, I will mention a remarkable variety of glass worked generally into the form of tall, thin-necked flasks; within the greenish transparent metal float irregular masses of an opaque deep red. We have here, in fact, the elements of which the famous Chinese glazes—the flambé and the sang-de-bœuf—are made up. As in these glazes, so in this case in the glass, the effect doubtless depends on the partial reduction of the incorporated copper-oxide.
I should add that engraved glass seems never to have found much favour with the Persians. On the few specimens that we have in our collections—they are decorated with birds and flowers rudely ground on the wheel—the work is of the poorest description.
GLASS MADE IN PERSIA
SEVENTEENTH OR EIGHTEENTH CENTURY
I have so far taken it for granted that the bulk of this glass is of comparatively modern origin, and I have found confirmation for this opinion in the close relation of so much of it to the glass made at Murano in the seventeenth century. Still more definite evidence is, however, at hand, as the following passage from the travels of Sir John Chardin will show.[[266]]
‘There are Glass-Houses all over Persia, but most of the Glass is full of Flaws and Bladders and is Greyish from the account doubtless that the Fire lasts but three or four days, and that their Deremne as they call it, which is a sort of Broom, which they use to make it, does not bear heat so well as ours. The Glass of Chiras is the finest in the Country; that of Ispahan on the contrary is the sorriest, because it is only glass melted again. They make it commonly in Spring. They do not understand to Silver their Glass over, therefore their Glass Looking-glasses are brought from Venise, as also their sash glasses [glaces de châssis] and their pretty Snuff-Bottles. Moreover, the Art of Glass-making was brought into Persia within these last four score Years. A Beggarly and Covetous Italian taught it at Chiras for the sum of fifty Crowns. Had I not been informed of the matter, I should have thought that they had been beholded to the Portuguese for their Skill in so noble and so useful an Art. I ought not to forget to acquaint you with the Persian Art of Sowing Glass together very ingeniously, ... for provided the Pieces be not smaller than one’s Nail, they sow them together with Wyre and rub the seam over with a little white Lead or with calcined Lime, mixed with White of Egg, which hinders the water from soaking thro. Among their Sentences there is a goodly one relating to the ingenious piece of work just mentioned: If broken glass be restored again, how much more may Man be restored again after his Dissolution in the Grave?’
Closely connected with this Persian glass is the deep amber or honey-coloured glass, said to have been made in the island of Rhodes. A small collection of rudely executed bottles, pilgrims’ flasks and bowls, obtained in that island and in Cyprus, may be seen at South Kensington; they are there ascribed to the sixteenth century, I do not know on what grounds. These little vessels are all of the simplest shapes, such as could be formed directly from the paraison at the end of the blowing-iron, without removing the glass to the pontil. Some small hand-grenades of greenish black or of opaque jasper glass in the British Museum, come for the most part from Cyprus.
I may here say a word of the glass still in use in the Mohammedan East. At the present day the glass-works at Hebron, which I have already more than once mentioned, supply most of the common native glass in use both in Egypt and Syria[[267]]—of that of European origin there is no need to speak. Edward Lane describes the small conical lamps of thin glass ‘having a little tube at the bottom in which is stuck a wick twisted round a piece of straw.’ This is an old type of lamp that I have dwelt upon in a former chapter. Perhaps the most interesting form of glass vessel now in use in Cairo and Damascus is the covered sherbet-jug or bowl—the Kulleh. I have before me an example from Cairo made of a nearly opaque white glass, decorated with floral designs rudely painted on and perhaps not fired. Where this glass is made I do not know. We may perhaps regard the ware as a survival of the lattimo of the early eighteenth century (cf. Lane, Modern Egyptians, 1842, vol. i. p. 224).