4. In the Rijks Museum at Amsterdam. Eagle ‘displayed,’ two lions and triangular shields. This glass was formerly an heirloom in the Nassau-Orange family. On the base is engraved ‘Alsz diesz glas war alt tausend Jahr, es Pfalzgraff Ludwig Philipszen Werehret war—1643.’ (Figured by Hartshorne and by Garnier.)
The above four examples closely resemble one another; in each case the design is relieved upon a scalloped back, something like the linen-fold of late Gothic wood-panelling.
5. In the Cathedral treasury at Minden. The glass is of a pale honey tint. The design is formed of a lion with a shield containing a triangle, an eagle displayed and a ‘tree of life,’ somewhat similar to that on No. 1. The elements of the design are arranged stiffly with a wide field between. (Figured by Von Czihak.)
6. Formerly in the Cathedral at Halberstadt, now in Berlin, in private hands. Of greenish glass, only three and a half inches in height. Design—two lions and triangular shield.
7. In the Cathedral Treasury at Halberstadt. The design on this little glass has degenerated into a meaningless juxtaposition of bosses, bars, and fretted bands. (Figured by Von Czihak.)
This appears to exhaust the list of these little carved glass beakers. There is nothing in the treasury of St. Mark’s that can distinctly be classed with them; on the other hand, the ‘voirre taille d’un esgle, d’un griffon et d’une double couronne,’ mentioned in the inventory of the possessions of Charles the Bold of Burgundy, may well have been a cup of this class (Laborde, Les Ducs de Bourgogne, ii. No. 2753).
CHAPTER VII
MEDIÆVAL TREATISES ON GLASS
In a general way, it may be said of the Oriental glass that penetrated into Europe in the early Middle Ages, that the type is given by carvings in rock crystal. We can point to no example of sculptured glass that can be compared to the magnificent vases carved out of that mineral that we may see in the Louvre or in the treasury of St. Mark’s. I should be inclined to place the district where this branch of glyptic art flourished, whether we consider works of rock crystal or of glass, somewhere in what may be called Upper Western Asia—in Armenia, Georgia, or Western Persia—and to refer many of the extant examples to a date rather before than after the Arab conquest. But all this, of course, is pure conjecture.
Of quite another type was the glass made, it would seem without interruption during all this period, in various parts of Syria. The industry appears by this time to have passed in great measure into the hands of the Jews. Benjamin of Tudela in the twelfth century found Jewish glass-makers at Antioch and at Tyre. It was they, apparently, who carried on the old traditions in the manufacture of artificial pastes, coloured to imitate precious stones. The fusible glass containing lead of which such pastes were made had indeed been from an early date associated with the Jews—‘Vitrum plumbeum, Judæum scilicet,’ says Heraclius. The demand for such work must have increased immensely with the prevailing fashion of incrusting reliquaries, the covers of books, and various personal ornaments with large coloured jewels, real or false (generally the latter), cut en cabochon.