Technical. Appert, Blancourt, Bontemps, Bosc d’Antic, D’Holbach, Kunckel, Lobmeyr, Loysel, Merret, Neri, Peligot, Pellat, Porter, Powell, Ure.
General and historical. Brinckmann, Franks, Garnier, Gerspach, Havard, Labarte, Lacroix, Nesbitt, Sauzay.
CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTION
Glass is a substance in so many ways connected with the conveniences and amenities of our daily life, and the word calls up so many varied associations, that I must here at the very beginning make clear with what a comparatively small proportion of the manifold applications of the substance I have to deal.
In the first place, this is an art history, so that with methods of manufacture and practical uses we are only concerned so far as they may influence or help to explain points of artistic interest. Again, even on the artistic side, it is not with every branch of the varied applications of glass that we shall be occupied in this work. By an anomaly of the English language, whose vocabulary for matters connected with the arts is so strangely deficient, we have come to understand by the term ‘glass,’ when used without further explanation, what is called in the trade ‘hollow ware,’ the verrerie of the French; in other words—vessels of glass. The term may also be extended to include various minor applications of the material—beads, small ornaments, etc., what the French call verroterie. But the application of glass to windows, especially when coloured and stained glass is in question, to say nothing of work in mosaic, is usually, although not always, held to lie outside this narrower connotation of the word.
Now it happens that for us this restriction is in every way convenient. For though the material basis is the same, it is evident that both the artist who works in mosaic and the designer of stained windows are concerned, each in his department, with artistic problems only incidentally connected with the material in which they work. In other words, the art element in both these crafts only becomes prominent at a stage when the actual preparation of the glass is completed. It is, however, certainly a pity that there is no English word which would not only clearly connote the class of objects with which I have here to deal, but which would at the same time distinctly comprise nothing beyond.
I have now explained the somewhat restricted and artificial sense of the word glass that I propose to accept in this work. But for a moment let us pass to the other extreme, and going beyond the ordinary connotation of the term include in it the glazes of pottery—the word ‘glaze’ is in its origin the same as glass—as well as the many forms of enamel. In all these cases we are dealing with substances of similar composition. They may all probably be traced back to a common origin, so that from an evolutionary point of view we have here an instance of the development of the complex and varied from the simple and single. Looking at the question in another way, the art of the enameller, using the term in a restricted sense, may be held to be subsidiary both to that of the potter and of the glass-worker; while many of the problems that arise in treating of the glazes of fictile wares—questions as to fusibility, or as to the colours employed and the changes of these colours during the firing—turn up again in the manufacture of glass. We shall see that experience gained in following the processes of one art may serve to throw light upon the difficulties and problems of the other.
Historically the connection between glass and pottery is not so close. In some degree the prevalence of one art has tended to oust the other, or to relegate it to an inferior position. The Greeks, who carried the potter’s art to such perfection, knew little about glass—it was long an exotic substance for them. The Romans, on the other hand, who in the first centuries of our era first fully appreciated and developed the capacities of glass, produced little pottery of artistic interest. In the sixteenth century, in Umbria and Tuscany, where the finest majolica was made, we hear nothing of the manufacture of glass, while on the other hand the fayence of Venice, at this time pre-occupied with her glass, was of subsidiary importance. If we turn to the home of porcelain, in China glass has always held a subordinate position, while in Japan it was until recent days practically unknown.
Were a comparison to be made between the development of the various minor arts, it would be difficult to find a wider contrast than that between the history of porcelain and that of glass. The knowledge of porcelain was confined for nearly a thousand years to China, the country where it was first made, and where it was slowly brought to perfection. Let loose, as it were, in the West early in the eighteenth century, it had then a short period of glory, but before the end of the century the art had already fallen upon evil days. The manufacture of glass, on the other hand, had long been carried on in Egypt, and perhaps in other Eastern lands, by a primitive process, although it only became an article of general use after the discovery of the blowing-iron. When and where this discovery was made we do not know—perhaps somewhere in Syria or Mesopotamia, in the third or second century before Christ. The art of blowing glass was known, no doubt, if not fully developed, at the time when the kingdoms of the Ptolemies and of the Seleucidæ fell under the rule of the Romans. By them it was before long brought to perfection and carried into every corner of the West, so that by the second or third century of our era the production of glass in Europe was probably greater than at any subsequent time, at least until quite recent days. Nor was the art of glass-making completely extinguished by ‘the advance of the barbarians.’ Indeed, some of the Germanic tribes not impossibly brought with them a knowledge of the process not only of preparing but also of blowing glass, picked up on their journeyings through East Europe, or perhaps even learned in Western Asia. This was an instance of the passage to the North and West of the arts of civilisation, by what we may call the back-road of Europe, in opposition to the high-roads that led directly from Italy by way of the Rhone and the Rhine.