Page:History of Art in Phœnicia and Its Dependencies Vol 2.djvu/371

 GLASS. 335 time however, it underwent a development in various directions suggested by the sister art of ceramics. Look, for instance, at three vessels we reproduce (Plate VIII., Figs, i and 3 ; Plate IX., Fig. 2). The graceful curves of these little objects betray an advanced stage of the art, when taste had become refined and hands equal to any calls upon them. Long before arriving at this subtle beauty of form the glass- workers had perfected themselves in the use of colour ; they excelled in so arranging tints as to excite and please the eye. Not that their palette could boast of any great variety. They had four or five principal colours white, yellow, green, blue, and brown. Red only occurs now and then. Blue was the favourite colour of the Phoenician glass-workers, as it had been that of the enamellers of Egypt and Assyria, and was to be, in far later times, the chosen tint of the. Persian ceramists. These tints were obtained from metallic oxides. Cobalt, and perhaps copper, yielded blue ; green was certainly won from the latter metal ; manganese gave browns, blacks, and violets ; oxide of iron may have been turned to for yellow. It must have been by the aid of oxide of tin that the pearly hues in which the beauty of one of our phials consists (Plate IX., Fig. i) were produced. 1 This piece is of excessive rarity, and, we may say, as much of the cenochoe figured on the same plate (Fig. 2), on which the veining of agate is reproduced with success. Some vases exist in which the imitation of amber has been attempted. All the vases, with the characteristics we have just described, are either perfume-bottles or amphorae and jars of such small dimen- sions that they could hardly be anything but objects of luxury. Cups for the table do not seem to have been made of this coloured and translucid glass ; it may have been too costly for use in the manufacture of vessels which, from their nature, were liable to be often broken. On the other hand, as soon as the secret of making pure glass and tinting it with various colours was mastered it was employed in the imitation of precious stones. " By means of a coloured vitreous paste gems can be imitated with such perfection that the counterfeit will often puzzle the most skilful connoisseur ; gems are, in fact, no more than lumps of glass made by nature. . . . 1 Phosphate of lime would give the same tint, we are told : but we do not know that the ancients employed that common material as a colouring base.