Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 10.djvu/671

Rh [ark 1rrsror.r.] of Venetian art glass is principally due. Salviati revived the forn1er processes and practised them, not in n1ere slavish imitation, but with freedom, invention, and ﬁne artistic instinct. Every general industrial exhibition has con- tained brilliant examples of the products of the Venice and Murano Glass Company, composed chieﬂy of English capitalists, and formerly managed by Salviati. The fame of Venice in glass—1naking so completely eclipsed that of Italian cities that it is difficult to learn much respecting their progress in the art. It appears, however, tl1at as early as 1295 furnaces had been established at Trcviso, Vicenza, Padua, Mantua, Ferrara, Ilavenna, and Bologna. In 1634 there were in Rome two and i11 Florence one glass-house 3 but whether any of these produced orna- mental vessels, or only articles of common use and window glass, would not appear to have as yet been ascertained. The history of glass-making in France, Spain, Germany, and England offers many points of resemblance. In the ﬁrst three, and probably in England also, glass was made at the period of the Roman empire; in France about Lyons, as is sl1own by a monument in the Musée Lapidaire to one Julius Alexander, described as an “ opifex artis vit1'ia3,” in Normandy and Poitou, and probably in many other parts. In Spain glass, according to Pliny, was manufactured (Nat. ]Iz'.sl., xxxvi. 26, G6) in many parts of the country, “per Hispanias,” but the remains of Roman glass-making have been chiefly found in the Valleys which run down to the coast of Catrlonia, but also near the mouth of the Ebro, in Valencia and in Murcia (Seﬁor Ilico y Sinobus, Del l'idr-io, p. 11). Glass-making i11 Germany during the Roman period would seem to have been carried on extensively at Cologne, near which city many remarkable glass vessels of peculiar character have been discovered. The art was probably not lost during the period which followed the downfall of the Roman power. In the year 758 Cuthbert, abbot of J arrow, wrote to Lullo, bishop of Mainz, to request him to send him a maker of glass vessels. It is scarcely probable that the art had been forgotten and revived between the 5th and the 8th centuries. It is not equally clear that glass was made in England, though it is probable that this was the case. Both vessels and window glass have been found in almost all parts of the cauntry, and at Buckholt, near the Roman road from Vinchester to Salisbury, the remains of a glass furnace, among which were numerous fragments of glass which may possibly have been of Roman origin, and a fragment of un- doubtedly Roman pottery. But associated with these were fragments of glass of the 14th and later dates, and of pottery of the 16th century. Very little has been ascertained as to the practice of the art in either of the four countries during the dark ages, but it would seem to have been preserved in France and Germany, and perhaps also ‘in England and Spain. The fact narrated by Bede, in his history of the abbots of 'Vearmouth, that Benedict Biscop about 675 procured workmen fron1 France to make glass for his monastery, shows at once that it was preserved in France and lost or nearly so i11 England. But a great quantity of drinking vessels are found in the tombs of the Anglo-Saxons while still pagan ; and although the like are found both in France and in Germany, it is said that a greater number and n1ore varieties occur in England, and it has thence been inferred that they were probably made in the country. Welsh poets of the 6th century (2), Aneurin and Llywarch Hen, both mention glass vessels by a name, “wydr,” evidently derived from vitrum, and it is possible that the Welsh retained a knowledge of its manufacture. Some know- ledge of the art of manipulating glass existed i11 Ireland in and before the 12th century, as is shown by cameo GLASS 653 heads and small pieces of mosaic glass of Clhite peculiar patterns which occur on objects of Irish workmanship ('1'ra-nsactions of the I303/al Iris/L Academy, vol. xxiv., Antiq., part. iv.). In France “ vitrarii "’ are mentioned in several centuries from the 6th to the 11th ; in Germany, as has been shown above, there is ground for believing that the art was prac- tised in the 8th century ; and in the 12th artisans are found at Cologne with the designation “ ustor ” attached to their names, which Merlo (Ix'2'inst zmrl Ii'a'instler in Ifiiln, p. 563) suggests may probably mean maker of glass. Nothing seems to have been ascertained about the existence of the art in Spain between the Gothic conquest and the 13th century, when it was practised at Almeria by the Moors. During the medizeval period France produced large 3[edi,E,-,,_1 quantities of glass, as well in the form of vessels as in that period. of window glass. The ﬁrst were made on a large scale in Dauphiné in the 14th century. In 1338 Humbert the dauphin granted a part of the forest of Chamborant to a glass—maker on condition that he should furnish him with - more than 3000 vessels of glass annually (Hist. I)alpIz., ii. 363). In 1302 window glass was made at Bezu le Foret, in the department of the Eure, for the king of F rance; a fragment of a roll of accounts for that year is preserved in the Bibliotheque Nationale. Glass was also made in Poitou, and a drageoir with the arms of Charles VIII. of France (1470-1498) has been engraved by M. Fillon (L’a7't de Terre, &c.) which is believed to have been made in that province. Much glass was no doubt made for windows both in lermany and the Low Countries, during the .Iiddle Ages, and in 1453 mention occurs of a fountain and four plateaux made for Philip the Good, duke of Burgundy, by a glass- maker of Lille 3 but if artistic objects were made, hardly any examples have been preserved. Glass-makers existed at Vienna in 1221 (Peligot, Le Verre, p. 342). In 1428 a Muranese artiﬁcer set up a furnace in the same city, and another was established by another Italian in 1486, which it is said was still at work in 1563. How far these efforts to rival the manufactures of Murano may l1ave succeeded we have no information, but contemporaneously the native artiﬁcers continued to produce articles for common use, as we may see by the woodcut in the edition of George Agricola De Re Jletallica, published at Basel in 1561, re- presenting the interior of a glass-house. In this the tall cylindrical drinking-glasses known as wiederkoms, bottles with big bellies and slender necks, and retorts may be seen. A glass-house was founded at Daubitz in Bohemia in 1442, others in 1504 (Peligot, Le I'erre, p. 343). In England vessels of glass seem to have been but little used during the Middle Ages; they occur very rarely in inventories, and when they do, as in the Calendars of the Treasury of the Exchequer, they are usually described as mounted in gold or silver, or as painted, being probably enamelled glass vessels from Constantinople, Damascus, or Venice, objects rather of virtu than of daily use. It has even been asserted that there is no evidence that any description of glass was made in England before the 15th century, but in the roll of the taxation made at Colchester in 1295 three of the principal inhabitants are designated “verrer”; and it would seem hardly probable that so many in such a town were glaziers only and not glassmakers. In the 14th century Andrew le glasswright is mentioned in the records of Great Yarmouth. In 1439 (or 1447) English glass is mentioned in the contract for the windows of the Beauchamp chapel at Warwick, but dis- paragingly, as the contractor binds himself not to use it. In 1485, however, it is mentioned in such a manner as to lead to the conclusion that it was dearer and presumably better than either “Dutch, Venice, or Normandy glass "