ade himself master of this art, which he regarded as essentially a French one. The preparation of these vitraux involved a knowledge of the process either of spinning the molten paraison or of o

an any made nowadays, and the large amount of potash present probably promoted the brilliancy of the colours. From the earliest times the blue colouring was given by cobalt, and this was never of a richer and purer tint than in the twelfth century; already in the thirteenth copper was added to correct a tendency to purple. The famous ruby red, which became rarer after the thirteenth century until in the seventeenth the secret was entirely lost, was produced by the partial reduction of a small quantity of suboxide of copper, but in this case the colour is only developed on reheating the glass. The more purplish tint given by a somewhat similar treatment with gold was not known to the medi?val glass-maker.[95] Manganese was of course t

e colours of medi?val window-glass, it is because much of it will be found appli

one reason or another the material was not in favour for objects that had any claim to be regarded as works of art. And yet during all this time the few rare specimens of sculptured glass brought from Constantinople, or of enamelled glass from Egypt and Damascus, were highly prized, and it might well be thought that the skill and knowledge to rival these e

ition that the said Guionet should furnish him yearly, for the use of the prince's household, with the following pieces of glass:-240 beakers with feet, known as hanaps; 144 amphor?, 432 urinalia, 144 large basins, 72 plates, 72 plates without borders, 144 pots, 144 water vessels, 60 gottefles, 12 salt-cellars, 240 lamps, 72 chandeliers, 12 large cups, 12 small barils, 6 large vessels for transporting wine, and one nef. This was certainly an ample yearly supply even for a princely household. The practical, not to say homely, nature of most of the objects requisitioned is obvious. The gottefle, we should add, has been

to France to King René. We shall find, however, later on, that this great patron of the arts was one of the earlie

dern French writers on glass cannot always escape the awkward expression 'un verre de verre.' In England, where the use of the word glass in this sense probably came in somewhat later, we find more than once in inventories of the fourteenth century the quaint com

from the old greenish glass; like the Germans of to-day, they declared that the wine tasted better. Even B

y, more so probably than that made from the beechwood ashes used from of old in Germany. The passage to the new methods would here be much more revolutionary than in the case of the latter count

. Some ambiguity arises from the vague use of the word verre, to which I have already referred. But when Joinville tells us how the Comte d'Eu, in a moment of

AT

ATE MEDI

ING RELICS 2. WAX COVER

possessions of Charles V., taken in 1379. Notwithstanding this, it is evident that the French kings at this time took much interest in the manufacture of glass. When hunting in the forests around Paris, they would turn aside to visit the furnace of one of these local makers of verre de fougère who already claimed the privileges of gentlemen. Thus early in the reign of Charles VI. we find an entry of a payment 'pour

TE

ATE MEDI

2. CUP WITH CONIC

Heraclius a little later, to that of Georg Agricola in the sixteenth century, when we find the glass industry taking an important place in many parts of Germany, there is little direct evidence on the subject to bring forward.[98] Apart, however, from a few insignificant little bottles, used as reliquaries (Plates XX. and XXI.), nothing survives from this time. On the other hand, when in the fifteenth century we come again upon evidences

ature of the time. As far back as 1250, the great Dominican encyclop?dist, Vincent de Beauvais, states that the best mirrors are made from glass and lead (ex vitro et plumbo). A spiegel-glas is mentioned by a German writer as early as the end of the twelfth century, and b

or torna

tro a sè pio

ato vetro-I should not more quickly receive your image than now my mind receives your thoughts.' T

l' from Venice, the Venetians attempted in vain to make mirrors on the German system. The difficulty, perhaps, was to prepare flat and even

his paraison a mixture of 'piombo, stagno, marchesita d'argento e tartaro' had been introduced before the vesicle was quite cool-so at least a contemporary Italian writer asse

t is undoubtedly English glass made between the Norman Conquest and the time of our Tudor kings. References to its use in contemporary writers are much rarer than in France. The cuppa vitrea, which in 1244 Henry III. sent to his goldsmith, Edward of Westminster,

ay a Laurence Vitrearius holding land at Chiddingfold in Surrey, still in the time of Elizabeth a centre for the manufacture of the native glass made of fern-ash and sand. Again, William le Verir of the same place is mentioned in a deed of 1301. But perhaps the strongest

the early Altarists and Muranists-until I have described the

hich a design or pattern was applied to the back of a small sheet of glass-in gold for the most part, but other colours were sometimes used. The plaque thus decorated was either fixed into a piece of furniture, or simply backed with some impervious material. In this somewhat indefinite group is included, on the one hand, what is in fact a ki

ecorated at Aachen and in the Norman churches of Southern Italy-a pulpit at Bitonto in Apulia is a remarkable example. But we need not go far to find a still finer specimen of such work: the Gothic framework of the retabulum that formerly was placed in front of the high altar in Westminster Abbey[102] is decorated with bosses of glass paste cut or cast en cabochon, with casts of antique gems, and, above all, with little plaques of blue and purple glass backed with silver foil. On the upper surfac

gold, pasted beneath the more or less transparent pigments, shows through here and there. In

h cases the gold is applied to the back of the glass by weak gum, and the design traced with a pointed instrument somewhat in the manner of the catacomb glasses. The effect may be heightened in various ways by additional touches of pigment on the draperies, or by a glazing of colour for the flesh-tints; the colours are worked up with a resinous body, and silver foil in little plates and spangles is added in places; finally, over the back

er the gold, generally of a bright red, but sometimes of green or black, and this backing shows through in places. In the case of a very beautiful example formerly in the Spitzer collection, the design was drawn upon the central portion of a plate of flashed

magnificent baiser-de-paix in the Louvre, which came from the chapel of t

wn of Turin, where it is now exhibited in the Museo Civico. In some of the earlier pieces, especially on one of Byzantine character-perhaps Muranese work of the end of the thirteenth century-the g