Glass

by Edward Dillon

ROEMER OF GERMAN GREEN GLASS
ABOUT 1600, A.D.

Of the Rhenish green glass, the only other forms that I shall mention are the upright barrel-shaped beaker covered with prunts of various forms, in which the Mai-trank, a kind of ‘cup,’ was brewed, and finally the Krautstrunk or cabbage-stalk, a tall cylindrical glass bristling with formidable thorny prunts. Mathesius, who is responsible for the picturesque name, already in the seventeenth century calls the Krautstrunk an old form. The form is indeed noticeable, for among this family of green glass it is the only important instance of the cylindrical shape so much in favour for the enamelled ware.

The green glass as a group is very poorly represented in our London museums; as I have said, it can best be studied in the works of the Dutch painters. The handsome roemer in Jan van de Velde’s still-life piece (National Gallery, No. 1255) may be taken as a typical example.

Venetian Influence in Germany

We must now turn again to the glass of Venice, and consider how far and in what direction its influence can be traced upon that made in the north. This much we know—that in the fifteenth century, and perhaps earlier, the Venetian glass was largely imported into Germany, and this not only on the backs of hawkers, for the large Venetian firms had agencies in many German cities.[^[190]] There were at that time depôts of the Venetian merchants at such comparatively remote places as the Silesian towns of Görlitz and Breslau, and early in the fifteenth century the Italian glass was sold in the market-place of Vienna. At this time, however, we are unable to trace any influence these importations may have had upon the local German glass—of this last, indeed, practically nothing is known. It would seem that it was not until the sixteenth century was well advanced that any attempt was made in Germany to compete with the Venetian cristallo. Like the mediæval glass of France and England, the earlier German glass was doubtless a mere household ware, of all descriptions the least likely to be preserved.

It was in Southern Germany—in Switzerland and Swabia, and still more in the wealthy towns of Augsburg, Regensburg, and Nuremberg—that the Italian influence, in the matter of glass as in the other departments of the arts, was most strongly felt. As early as 1531 the town council of Nuremberg granted a subsidy to promote the introduction of the Venetian methods of making glass. We are told that Augustin Hirschvogel (d. 1560), a member of the well-known family of glass-stainers, some of whom we shall meet again before long, was interested in the question, and, according to one account, he learned the secrets of the art at Murano. In any case, there exist specimens of what is undoubtedly German glass, decorated with coats-of-arms of local families, both the shapes and the enamelling of which carry us back to the Venetian enamelled glass of the early sixteenth century. Good examples of this ware may be found in the richly enamelled pilgrims’ flasks, of which there are examples in the Germanic Museum at Nuremberg and in the British Museum. In such specimens the Italian influence is seen not only in the beadings and the gilding, but in the nature of the metal itself. How strong this southern influence was in these parts in the second half of the sixteenth century we may see in the work of the contemporary goldsmiths. In the case of glass, however, the purely Italian forms seem to have been early abandoned, and the same may be said of the style of the enamels employed in the decoration.

Of a later time than these South German examples of enamelled ware are the even more definite copies of the sixteenth-century glass of Venice that were made in the neighbourhood of Cologne. Here we have deliberate imitations of the Italian models—tall-stemmed glasses of thin cristallo with wide-winged handles, the latter often of deep blue metal. There is a row of these flügel-gläser, as the Germans call them, arranged on an upper shelf in the British Museum; some of these may perhaps be referred to the glass-house at Dessau, where Italians were employed between 1679 and 1686, but as a whole such glasses must be of a somewhat earlier date than this. In any case, we must regard these flügel-gläser as exotic growths, which lie quite apart from the two great German groups of the seventeenth century—I mean, of course, the enamelled and the engraved glass.

In fact, the real influence of the new cristallo of Venice was exerted in another direction. People who had seen this clear white glass were no longer content with the thick heavy metal of varying hues of green, blue, and yellow, often full of bubbles and defects. Already early in the sixteenth century in various parts of Germany attempts were made to introduce the Venetian methods of working, above all the Venetian materials. Now the Germans of that day were a practical people, already well ahead in many of the technical arts, above all in those relating to mining, to the smelting of metals, and to the arts du feu generally. After a moment of hesitation, instead of merely copying the formulas that they learned from the Italians, they adapted them to the conditions of their own country, and thus were soon able, in the central mountain districts among a population of miners and woodmen, to establish a glass industry quite independent of foreign aid. In France, on the other hand, and still more in England, up to the end of the seventeenth century, whatever glass of artistic character was produced was made for the most part by foreign workmen, and to some extent with foreign materials. Perhaps the most striking instance of the independent line taken by the German glass-workers may be found in the continued use of potash made from the beechwoods of their forests, and with this alkali they were soon able to produce a glass as brilliant and colourless as the soda-made cristallo of the south.

So far we have only got to the fringe of our subject; for the green glass of the Rhine and Holland can in no way be regarded as characteristic of German glass as a whole. Such glass I would rather class as Lotharingian, using that term for that central land that is neither French nor quite German. In so doing I am of course treading on delicate ground; but I am prepared to maintain that it is rather in a heavily enamelled willkomm-humpen of plain cylindrical form from Saxony or Franconia than in a prunted roemer of green glass that we have a really characteristic type of the glass of Germany.

And this brings us to the question, to how much of this Central German glass the term Bohemian may be fairly applied? This at least may be safely said, that the expression ‘German glass from the Bohemian frontier’ would cover nearly the whole of it. What it is essential to remember is that with the exception of a small section of the engraved glass we have little to do with Prague and the Czecs of the central plateau of Bohemia. As a whole this glass was made by German-speaking people dwelling on either side of the mountains which gird Bohemia to the north-east, the north-west, and the south-west, and divide that kingdom from Silesia, from Saxony, and from Bavaria respectively. Of all these districts it may be said that wherever the pines and beeches of the wooded slopes provided both fuel for the furnaces and (from their ashes) the indispensable potash, wherever, too, from the hillsides a pure white sand could be extracted, and finally, wherever in the mountain streams a source of power for cutting the wood or grinding the glass was at hand, there a glass furnace would sooner or later be established.