SARACENIC ENAMELLED GLASS
CIRCA 1300. GERMAN METAL MOUNTING OF SIXTEENTH CENTURY
Somewhat taller than these Dresden hanaps is the beaker at Wilhelmshöhe (it is some nine inches in height). The decoration—an al fresco wine-party with musicians—calls to mind one of the groups of figures on the Würzburg flask. Somewhat similar is the beaker preserved in the picture gallery at Cassel, but the enamels on this are distinctly poorer.
A beautiful beaker of this class came to the British Museum with the Waddesdon collection. It stands upon a French-Gothic mounting of the fourteenth century. We see a prince seated on his throne, with attendants on either side. The glass is colourless and clear, and among the enamels a palish green, applied as a thin wash, should be noted.[[118]]
Since then another goblet of this class has been acquired by the British Museum. This cup is said to have been dug up in the neighbourhood of Aleppo. The glass is much decayed, in this forming an exception to the other goblets of the class. The design includes two conventional palm-trees, whose trunks are built up of a series of nodes.[[119]]
On a goblet from Coptos, in the same collection, a number of little fish in grisaille or dull red constitute the sole decoration. There is a fragment of glass similarly decorated at South Kensington, which came, I think, from Achmin. We find the same little fishes again on a cup of glass, described as a godet à l’huile, lately added to the Louvre collection.
These examples practically exhaust the list of the lamp-shaped goblets of undoubted Oriental origin. But it would be impossible at this point to pass over the absolutely unique cup from the Adrian Hope collection, decorated with a seated figure of the Virgin. This goblet is now in the British Museum, and it is there described as Venetian of the thirteenth century ([Plate I.]). The glass, somewhat thick and slightly greenish in hue, with a few drawn bubbles, in no way differs from that of the beakers already described.[[120]] So of the shape and of the quality and colours of the enamel. The slight ‘kick,’ however, at the base is normal: that is to say, there is no aperture (see above, p. [159]); the cup, therefore, needs no rim or stand. As regards the decoration, we find, in addition to the usual colours, an inscription in Gothic lettering, now quite black, but originally executed in silver. I shall return to this cup in the next chapter. I mention it here as I am inclined to find for it an Oriental provenance.
I have dwelt at perhaps disproportionate length on this special type of goblet. We have here, however, a group from a historical point of view, of exceptional interest.
A small damaged goblet of cylindrical shape at South Kensington forms a transition to the group of larger beakers. It bears a series of medallions of blue enamel containing a curious design—a bird of prey seizing a duck. The cylindrical goblets with projecting collars do not present any special point for remark. There is some reason for regarding the quaint little flasks, with narrow swelling necks, as an early type. There are two of this class at South Kensington; in both cases the glass is much decomposed. Better preserved is the little bottle with the red eagle figured in Schmoranz (Plate vii.); the evidence, however, for the early date (1217) given to it is not quite conclusive.