With the above exceptions there is no authentic work that can be pointed to which dates earlier than the fourteenth century. The finest examples of Saracenic glass, some of which may be seen in our museums, are the beautiful enamelled glass mosque lamps (Fig. 299). They mostly date from the fourteenth century, and are usually decorated richly with Arabic inscriptions—sometimes with the name of the artist—in gold and coloured enamels.
In the city of Damascus glass cups and other vessels of great beauty were made at this period, having enamelled Saracenic decorations.
The “cups of Damascus” were much prized, and according to the inventories of the kings of England, France, and Germany, we learn that they were set in gold stands or mounts, and were usually presents to Western monarchs, brought by their ambassadors from the East.
The cup kept by the Musgrave family, and known as the “Luck of Edenhall,” is made in enamelled Saracenic glass, and has a leather covering of fifteenth-century workmanship.
Fig. 299.—Enamelled Oriental Glass Bottle and Mosque Lamp.
Venetian blown glass has always been renowned for its beauty, both in its elegance of form-as in the wine-glasses, goblets, and cups—and in the beautiful opalescent hues of its delicate colouring.
The making of glass in Venice began to assume great importance in the fourteenth century, but many small glass furnaces were in operation for more than a hundred years prior to this date.
The Venetians apparently, in the early period of the Renaissance, studied very closely the remains of the Roman glass, and eventually imitated and produced nearly all the kinds of glass that in former days were made in ancient Rome.
Another direct cause which led to the advancement of the glass makers’ craft in Venice was the parricidal conquest of Constantinople by the Christians of Rome, aided by the fleets of Venice, in 1204, for after the sacking of the Byzantine capital, most of the portable works of art of every kind-including the bronze horses that had been brought from Rome to Constantinople by its founder, and which now adorn the front of St. Mark’s-were carried off to Venice, and it is more than likely that after this the glass mosaic workers, among other Byzantine craftsmen, had come to Venice, where they found employment in the rising republic.