Page:History of Art in Phœnicia and Its Dependencies Vol 2.djvu/368

 334 HISTORY OF ART IN PHOENICIA AND ITS DEPENDENCIES. rapidly rotating, threads of coloured glass were forced into these grooves. Thin as the threads were, they yet stood up in slight relief, but after the vessel was annealed they were brought down, and a homogeneous surface obtained by polishing. 1 That the account here offered is the right one we know from the fact that in some bottles the operations described have been carried out by clumsy workmen, with the result that some of the grooves have lost their threads ; in other cases the polishing has been omitted either from carelessness or from a deliberate choice of the effect so given. An example of this is to be seen in the phial here figured, which was probably found at Cameiros (Fig. 255). 2 Even where all salience has disappeared the eye may, as a rule, follow the thread of colour from one end to the other. The setting of the thread must have varied in difficulty with the complexity of the design. It was easy enough to roll it spirally round the body of a vase (Plate IX., Figs, i and 3), but more dexterity was required when it had to be broken (Plate VII., Figs, i and 3 ; Plate VIII., Figs. 1-3; Plate IX., Fig. i). In these the thread had to be stretched at each angle by a thrust of the little forceps with which the workmen held and managed it. The whole operation had to be done with great rapidity in order to get it finished before the glass cooled, and only a more than usually dexterous hand could carry it out with success. The vases so made must have been far more costly than those which had no ornament beyond a thread at the neck and ribbed sides. The commonest shape among those glass vessels to which a high antiquity can be ascribed, is that of the alabastron. 1 1 was extensively used in Phoenicia at a very early date ; it was placed in the tombs, it was exported, and, as our readers will remember, it was placed in the hands of the dead on the anthropoid sarcophagi (Vol. I., Figs. 132 and 134). In the series of these vessels we must, then, look for the oldest products of Egyptian and Phoenician glass-making. The shape was easily made ; it required no elaborate or greatly salient handles, and being consecrated by its connection with the burial of the dead, it was never abandoned. In course of 1 This explanation, in which we" follow M. GREAU, agrees with that adopted by M. FROEHNER (La Verrerie antique, ch. ii.). . 2 FROEHNER also figures a bottle with the thread in relief (La Verrerie antique, P- 39)-