Fig. 357. Gallic swords.
Gladius, R. A general term, including all the different kinds of swords or glaives, but denoting more particularly the two-edged swords used by the Greeks, Romans, and Gauls. Fig. [357] represents two Gaulish swords, the form of which may easily be guessed, even though they are in the scabbard; Fig. [356] is a Roman gladius.
Glaive. A blade on a pole having its edge on the outside curve, used by foot-soldiers in the 15th century.
Glans, Gr. and R. (lit. an acorn). A large leaden slug, of long oval form, which was hurled by a sling in place of stones.
Fig. 358. Venetian Glass Vase, 16th century.
Glass. The discovery is lost in remote antiquity. Pliny gives a legend which ascribes it to chance. Glass bottles in Egypt are represented upon monuments of the 4th dynasty (at least 2000 years B.C.). A vase of greenish glass found at Nineveh dates from B.C. 700. Glass is found in the windows at Pompeii; and the Romans stained it, blew it, worked it on lathes, and engraved it. Pliny mentions, as made by the Romans in his time, glass coloured opaque, red, white, black (like obsidian), or imitating jacinths, sapphires, and other gems; also murrhine glass. This last was either an imitation of fluor-spar, or a kind of agate, or fluor spar. The Romans also made mosaic or millefiori, in which the threads of colour are melted into a rod, so that at every section the whole pattern appears; and cameo glasses, in which a paste of one colour is laid over another, and the whole then carved into the required design; gold leaf was also worked into the substance or fixed on the surface. A gate at Constantinople took its name from the glass works near it, but little is known of the Byzantine art, nor of earlier European art than the 13th century. In mediæval times stained glass windows, in leaden frames, were constructed with great success in England, France, and Flanders. In the 13th century they appear in Italy. The Venetian art took its impulse from the capture of Constantinople in 1204. Its peculiar beauty is derived from the curved forms and tenuity of substance obtained in blowing. (Fig. [358].) There are six kinds of Venetian glass. (1) Vessels of colourless or transparent glass, or of single colours, generally blue or purple. (2) Gilt or enamelled glass. (3) Crackled glass, having a surface rough and divided irregularly into ridges. (4) Variegated or marbled opaque glass, called schmeltz; the most common variety is a mixture of green and purple, sometimes resembling jasper, sometimes chalcedony; other varieties are imitations of lapis lazuli and tortoise-shell; and avanturine, which is obtained by mingling metallic filings or fragments of gold leaf with melted glass. (5) Millefiori, or mosaic glass, in imitation of the old Roman process. (6) Reticulated, filigree, or lace glass. The varieties contain fine threads of glass, generally coloured, but sometimes milk-white, included in their substance. The lightness and strength of the Venetian glass are due to its not containing lead like our modern flint glass. Venetian mirrors were for a long period widely celebrated. The oldest example of the German drinking-cups, ornamented with paintings in enamel, is of the date of 1553. The designs are commonly armorial bearings. From the beginning of the 17th century the Bohemian manufactories supplied vases enriched with ornamental subjects, particularly with portraits engraved upon the glass. The art of wheel engraving upon glass flourished in France under Louis XVI. In modern times this kind of ornamentation is produced by the agency of hydrofluoric acid. “Coarse glass-making in England was, in Sussex, of great antiquity.” (Fuller.) “The first making of Venice glasses in England began in London, about the beginning of the reign of Queen Elizabeth, by one Jacob Vessaline, an Italian.” (Stow.)
Glass-glazed Wares. (See Glazed Wares.)
Glaucous (γλαυκός). Of a sea-green colour, or a greyish blue.