| [207] | We hear, it is true, of water-wheels for grinding glass at Schwäbisch Grund, in Bavaria, in the second half of the sixteenth century. In these mills large beads (perhaps we may think of the chevron beads from Murano in this connection) were ground for exportation to the Indies by way of Antwerp (Von Czihak, p. 125). I may note that there is no reference to the cutting of glass in either Agricola or Mathesius. |
| [208] | It is interesting to compare with this work the carving—identical in technique—on reliquaries of rock crystal of Carlovingian date. Of these a remarkable example may be seen in the Mediæval Room in the British Museum. |
| [209] | The Schatzkammer at Munich is rich in examples of carved rock crystal of this period, but I can find few examples of carved glass in it. In the Imperial Museum in Vienna may be seen a superb series carved in both materials—the finest of these come from the Schatzkammer. |
| [210] | Lehmann died in 1622, and the elder George Schwanhart in 1667. |
| [211] | Compare with this the complaints, made at this time or a little later, of the artistic and social decadence of the glass-engravers in Bohemia and Silesia (p. [285]). |
| [212] | On the early use of hydrofluoric acid I shall have something to say a little further on. |
| [213] | This is rendered in the Latin edition ‘inque illarum exaltatione ad magnum ascendit gradum.’ It should, perhaps, be translated ‘to a high pitch of excellence.’ |
| [214] | There is an exquisitely engraved covered beaker of this period at South Kensington bearing the arms of the Elector of Trèves ([Plate XLII.]). |
| [215] | Especially by Doppelmayr in his Historische Nachricht von der Nürnbergischen Mathematicis und Künstlern, Nürnberg, 1730. A pretentious work, written in the Frenchified German of the day, and very inferior as an authority to Sandrart. |
| [216] | It was here that was first developed that hybrid type of drinking-glass which passed over to England early in the eighteenth century. In these glasses the engraved bowl carries us back to Germany, and the air or opaque twisted stem to the vetro di trina of Venice. |