CHAPTER X
THE ENAMELLED GLASS OF THE SARACENS—continued
I will now pass in review some of the more famous specimens of Saracenic glass.
Of the ‘Goblet of the Eight Priests,’ now in the museum at Douai (figured in Gerspach, p. 107), we have an earlier record than in other cases. It was bequeathed by one Marguerite Mallet, early in the fourteenth century, along with other property, for the endowment of that number of chantry priests. The case of cuir bouilli in which the goblet is preserved is a remarkable specimen of the French art of that time. The inscription on this cup is unfortunately now illegible.
For the ‘Glass of Charlemagne,’ which has passed from the treasury of an abbey near Chartres to the museum of that town, it is claimed that it was presented by Harun-ar-Rashid to the great Emperor. M. Schefer many years ago made this cup the starting-point of a special memoir, in which he collected a mass of information from Arab sources. This essay may perhaps be regarded as the earliest example of any intelligent interest in this class of Oriental glass.
The ‘Luck of Eden Hall,’ long preserved in the home of the Musgrave family, has acquired a certain factitious celebrity from a legend that has served as the theme of more than one ballad, none, however, of any great antiquity.[[117]] Like the Douai cup, it is preserved in a leathern case—in this instance not of earlier date than the beginning of the fifteenth century. The ‘Luck’ is figured in Lysons’s Magna Britannia, vol. iv.
These three goblets form a compact group. In all of them the decoration is simple, consisting chiefly of interlaced bands or straps forming geometrical patterns. There are no figures of men or animals, and the colouring is for the most part confined to blue and gold. We may, perhaps, attribute these glasses to the beginning rather than the end of the thirteenth century.
Probably of as early a date is the goblet preserved at Breslau (there is a photograph of it in Von Czihak’s Schlesische Gläser). Here there is no ornament apart from some fine arabesques of gold. This cup has long been associated with St. Hedwig, but it must not be confused with other so-called ‘Hedwig glasses,’ which, as we have seen, are carved in the manner of rock crystal.
I now come to a more elaborately enamelled group, in the decoration of which the human figure plays an important part.
In the Grüne Gewölbe at Dresden are two beakers or hanaps of this class, set in rich silver-gilt mountings of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Round one of these cylindrical beakers runs a spirited frieze, with polo-players, mounted on brown, white, and yellow horses; above is a cufic inscription in gold on a blue ground ([Plate XXV.]). On the other beaker, probably the earlier of the two, we see a group of brilliantly clad turbaned figures seated by a flowing stream—the water is naïvely rendered by a meandering line of blue enamel; the background is formed by a flight of aquatic birds. On both these glasses, beside the usual gamut of colours—gold, blue, red, green, yellow, and opaque white—we find some mixed brownish tints.