Se dit d’un objet en verre décoré au moyen d’une dorure intérieure, suivant le procédé de l’encadreur Glomi, qui paraît en avoir été l’inventeur au XVIIIe siècle.
Encycl. Les verres églomisés sont ces petits tableaux dont le sujet est peint sur le verre même qui les recouvre. On fait un fréquent usage de ses petits panneaux ou de ces lentilles pour former des dessus de bonbonnières, etc. Ordinairement, le tracé est fait à la pointe, sur une feuille d’or fixée au vernis sur le verre. Le mot “églomisé” a été inventé, en 1825, par l’archéologue Carrand et appliqué par lui aussi bien aux verres modernes décorés suivant la méthode de Glomi qu’aux objets beaucoup plus anciens, datant du plus haut moyen âge, où la feuille d’or est soudée au feu entre deux pellicules de verre.
The work was done on one glass, and another was made to literally enclose the finely etched gold lines, so that no harm could come to the decoration. Delicate landscapes as well as figures and portrait busts are done, and the glass is found coloured as well as clear white. There is a fine example in the Imperial Austrian Museum at Vienna, in which the silhouette in gold of a man appears with the inscription, “P. Ferdinand Karl, Professi Hilariensis. Mildner fec. à Gullenbrunn, 1799.”
In the Glass Gallery at the Victoria and Albert Museum, and at the British Museum, there are very fine specimens. At the former there is a drinking glass specially worthy of note. It is of tumbler shape, 3½ inches by 2¾ inches, and is formed of two layers of glass, one of which is etched in gold leaf, with a group of St. George and the Dragon, foliated scrolls, festoons, and arabesques. The bottom is coloured red and etched in gold, with the sacred monogram I.H.S., and the legend, “Benedictine sit nomen Domini.” The outside is cut in facets. This example is German early eighteenth century.
Wonderfully vivid hunting scenes are shown in gold-silhouette on an example of sixteenth-century work owned by Mr. FitzHenry; while black silhouette work of Nuremberg manufacture is painted in black with flowers and sacred emblems. Besides the gold ornamented glass, there was also a good deal made in the same way but decorated in very dark brown or black. Hunting scenes, elaborately sketched with the minutest detail in tree, hound, and huntsman, often figure on such pieces.
A volume on the silhouette in all its aspects would be incomplete without some reference to the use which, from earliest times, has been made of shadowgraphy to represent isolated scenes, and also complete plays on the stage.
In Paris, in 1771, the celebrated Theatre Seraphin was founded by Seraphin Dominique François, who opened his little theatre for shadowgraphy alone, in the gardens at Versailles.
Slight and dainty were the plays, and we can imagine the silk-clad audience in powder and patches who would come with the children, or with no excuse at all, to amuse themselves at the antics performed in this shadowland. Little they cared for the real shadows of the terrible Revolution which were already gathering as they applauded the silhouettes of Seraphin.
“Venez garçons, venez fillettes,
Voir Momus à la silhouette.”