Glass Circle News_No.107, Jun 2006

No. 107

E Dr. David Watts (Hon. Vice President),

27
Raydean Road, Barnet, ENS 1 AN.

I Andy McConnell, 21 The Landgate

Rye, East Sussex, TN31 7PA

R Henry Fox,

20 Ockford Road, Godalming, Surrey, GU7 1 QY.

June.

0 0 6

Web site, www. glasscircle.org
E-mail,

[email protected]

GLASS CIRCLE NEWS

The Great Aldrevandinus Beaker
Mystery . . .

The beaker has been a much favoured form

of glass drinking vessel since the discovery
of blowing in Roman times. Under the

Saxons there was possibly a shift in favour

of the drinking horn, but by the medieval
period the beaker was firmly back in favour.

Although for decoration the Romans used

applied spots of colour and the Saxons
white trailing, it was only with the return of

the Crusaders from the Holy Lands in the

late 13
6
century that we encounter beakers

with polychrome enamelled decoration.
This reflects an established artistic tradition in the Near East. The Luck of Eden Hall, in the V&A, is our best

known example. Its history is well established. But less well known to many is the above beaker, so called from

the words MAGISTER ALDREVANDIN” ME FECIT, painted in white enamel just below the rim. It was
published for the first time in 1909 with the above illustration. It poses a number of problems of great international

interest to glass historians. A major review in this issue of GC News discusses why this is so.

continued on page 2.

Death of Peter Dreiser
–

an appreciation by Katherine Coleman on page 10.
,

…and how this goblet inspired a course in glass making, page 12.

GLASS CIRCLE NEWS No. 107, 2006

Editorial
Hugh Tait and Aldrevandin

A quick thumb through this issue will reveal the above

average length article on the Aldrevandinus beaker. It is the
result of your editor being presented with Hugh Tait’s glass

library by Mrs Tait. As she told me, this is no ordinary

library but a reflection of his professional interests in glass

and its history. Curators are expected to study the history

and develop the interest of objects in their charge. For those
in major museums like the BM the challenge is formidable,

well beyond the imagination of the average collector. Much
of the information is in foreign and often inaccessible

journals and books. Such is the case for the Aldrevandinus
beaker that must have led to many enquiries by and

discussions with his colleagues. It even led Corning

glassmaker, William Gudenrath to make an exact copy to

assess the problems involved in its manufacture.

Many will not have even heard of the Aldrevandinus
beaker, yet it epitomises one of the most significant areas of

decorative glassmaking in early medieval glass history. Are

there technological and artistic relationships between

glassmaking in the Middle East and that in Venice and the
rest of Europe and, if so, what are they and how did they

develop? The Aldrevandinus group of enamelled beakers
sits at the centre of this problem. In the following review,

with the translation package on my computer working

overtime, I have attempted to extract the information
central to this issue as currently understood by experts

around the world. Their views change as more information

comes to light and I have not shirked adding my own

critical assessment of their beliefs, including those of Hugh,
himself. Minimal references have been added for the

benefit of the initiated although few will have these

volumes on their shelves. And I would like to express my

thanks to The Society of Antiquaries, of which Hugh was a
proud Fellow, for the free use of its fine library.

One disadvantage for me was the inability to examine first
hand the vessels and shards illustrated. In particular, the

quality of the glass itself is often poorly described. Hugh,

Mrs Tait told me, was ruthless in this respect, using his BM

`clout’ to have objects out of their cases for close scrutiny,

often at short notice. How, I asked myself, was “bright and

clear” understood in the 13
th
century compared with today?

Such problems I have had to take for granted.

I hope this review will entertain, educate, stimulate and
perhaps even annoy its readers, but if in so doing it helps
promote the understanding of one of Hugh’s life-long

obsessions it will have served its purpose and express my
gratitude for the privilege of being able to do so.

Finally, a note on the meaning of the numbers in Table 1.
The Mean is the average numerical value of the samples,
obtained by adding them all together and dividing by the

number of samples. The Standard Deviation (S.D.)
indicates the spread or range of the samples around the

Mean for each group. If the Mean±S.D. of the groups of

samples for each component show a marked overlap, as

they do in Table 1, then the groups are considered to be
numerically identical. Such statistical presentation provides

an easy way of assessing the significance of the data.
The Great Aldrevandinus Beaker

Mystery

David
Watts

Islamic glass is thought of as the precursor of Venetian

glass and the glass collection bequeathed by Sir Felix Slade

(following his death on the 29th of March 1868) to the
British Museum was rich in Venetian glass. It was possibly
this connection that prompted Sir Augustus Wollaston

Franks (appointed curator of British Collections in 1851
and head of the new Department of British and Medieval

Antiquities and Ethnography in 1866) to acquire on behalf

of the British Museum an unusual enamelled beaker just
after its exhibition in Munich in 1876 (Fig. 1)). The clarity

and quality of the glass was thought to indicate that it was

made in either the Near East or Venice. But the beaker was
painted in enamels on both the inside as well as the outside

of the beaker — not a Venetian feature. Conversely, other

than its early date
(c.
1300) and that it carried a band of text

that said, in Latin “Master Aldrevandinus made me”, the
standard of artwork was generally considered to be poor by

comparison with known Islamic examples. Franks died in
1897 and was buried in Kensal Green cemetery; he was

never to know that after the Portland vase and Lycurgus

cup his purchase was to become one of the most

challenging acquisitions in the British Museum glass

collection.

The piece lapsed into obscurity and might well have stayed

there had not Miss Alice de Rothschild donated an early

enamelled “Saracenic” beaker to the BM (Fig. 5). The
Islamic connection prompted the then keeper, (Sir) C.

Hercules Read to present, in 1902, a paper on the subject to

The Society of Antiquaries of which he was Secretary
(Archaeologia,
2

217-226).
In 1899, Gustav Schmoranz

(Old Oriental Gilt and Enamelled Glass Vessels)
had noted

an unusual foot construction of some Islamic glass. Read
confirmed this in detail for the new Rothschild gift (Fig. 5)

and distinguished this specifically Saracenic feature from

the simple foot-rim of the so-called Aldrevandini beaker

(cover picture). On this basis, and the identification by Max
Rosenheim, a fellow Antiquarian, of the arms on the shield

as being European from Swabia, now part of the Kingdom

of Wutemburg, the Grand Duchy of Hesse and western
Bavaria (Figs. 1, 2)), Read concluded that the Aldrevandini
beaker must have been made in Europe, probably Venice.

These pearls of wisdom were, however, to fall on deaf ears.

In 1907, author/historian, Edward Dillon
(Glass),

having,

without doubt, discussed the piece extensively with Read,

concluded that “both the glass and the enamel . . . are the
work of Syrian craftsmen at Venice but more probably at

the court of one of the Frankish princes who held fiefs in

Syria during the 13
th
century.” His conclusion was biased

by consideration of a similar beaker, also in the BM, but

better decorated in the Islamic fashion. This piece, called

The Hope Cup after its donor, was recently declared a fake
by Hugh Tait after many years of suspicion (unfortunately
it is not on show in the BM). Further comparisons made by

world authorities, Robert Schmidt
(Das Glas)

and Islamic

specialist, C.J. Lamm led them to adopt Dillon’s suggestion

of “Franco-Syrian” to indicate the origin of both pieces
were, in their view, “Syro-Frankish”. In 1946, W.B. Honey

. . . . The views expressed in Glass Circle News are those of its contributors . . . .
2

GLASS CIRCLE NEWS No. 107, 2006

The Aldrevandinus beaker in the British Museum and an internal view to show the crude enamel in-filling of the

detail outlined in white enamel on the outside. 13th /14th century. Note the numerous gas bubbles. Height 13 cm.

“1
1111
•
11
5

Two views of the Aldrevandinus beaker copy by William Goodenrath to
show other features of the enamel decoration. (courtesy of Mrs. A. Tait)
The Restormel Castle beaker,

Cornwall. Ht 10.5 cm.
(British Museum.)

Display of Aldrevandinus-type shards from the London, Foster Lane excavations. Two bear the name
“BARTOLOMEUS”. One has only a decorative ribbon round the top. (Museum of London.)

All picture © D.0 Watts 2006

GLASS CIRCLE NEWS No. 107, 2006

Saracenic goblet donated to the British Museum by Miss

Alice de Rothschild from an investigation of which C.H. Read
accurately determined the unusual foot formation.

(Archaeologia,

1902, 217-226).

Dish painted with a band of scrolling foliage with
3-lobe terminals. Islam or Venice, 8th/9th century.

(A. Gasparetto,
(Mille Anni di Arte del Vetro a Venezia, p.16)
Mosque lamp, 14th century, and

detail to show the 3-lobe flower
and crinkle leaf infill decoration.

(G.
Morantz.
Old Oriental Gilt and

Enamelled Glass Vessels)

Detail from the shard of a plate incised with 3-lobe flowers and crinkle

Fig. 9
leaves decoration. 9th century, Tepe Madrasch, Iran.

(J. Kreiger, Nishapur Glass of the Early Islamic Period, p. 118.)

Fig. 11

Beaker enamel-decorated with a camel, typical flowers
and banding. Note the broad flared shape. Found in the

Middle Rhine area, 13th/14th century. Ht. 8 cm.

(E. Baumgartner& I. Kreuger,
Phoenix aus Sand und Asche p.142).
Fig. 1. Section of Sarneenic

goblet of enamelled glass.
(I,
linear.)

Beaker enamelled with
the name “.ETRUS”.

Note the similarities in
design with the shards

from Foster Lane. Found
in Mainz. Ht. 10.6 cm.

(E. Baumgartner & I. Kreuger,
Phoenix aus Sand and

Asche.p.129).

Fig.

Blue Saxon drinking horn with white
enamel trailed decoration.

c.
7th century.
(British Museum)

Yellow trailing has been found on
Saxon beads and on early

Fig. 12

4
__

t
oo_ medieval mid-

European glass.

Beaker of typical curved Islamic

shape bearing clear traces of

Aldrevandinus-type decoration.
Found in the North Caucusus.
Ht. 10. cm.

(F.A. Dreier, Venezianische
Glazer, p.31)

4
4a

GLASS CIRCLE NEWS No. 107, 2006

(Glass)
repeated verbatim Dillon’s preferred conclusion but

combined it with Dillon’s first thought by now indicating

an Italian working in Syria! Such academic confusion

might have quietly faded into obscurity but further events

were to bring the Aldrevandinus beaker back centre stage.

Unexpectedly, considerable evidence for many such
decorated beakers began to surface all over northern Europe

— Finland, Sweden, Denmark, Germany and even in South

Russia, Egypt and Israel. Recently, Ingeborg Kreuger,
world authority on this topic, reported in
The Journal of

Glass Studies
that shards had been found at 18 additional

sites in Germany, mostly in the upper Rhine area. A few
have been found in Venice itself but none (so far as I am

aware) in Syria or, more surprisingly, France. She also

identified a second signed Aldrevandinus beaker in Estonia.

The Syro-Frankish theory was under threat. Was the long-

standing assumption that the greatest number of finds
cluster around the source of manufacture to turn the

prevailing view on its head? Modern writers tend to hedge

their bets, favouring Venice but now not excluding northern

Europe. By chance, the Aldrevandinus beaker, as the first
recorded example, had become the archetype.

The beaker is included in one of the BMs most important

glass catalogues,
Masterpieces of Glass
(1968). Here Tait

reveals a cautious swing (back) to Venice as the source.
And, perhaps unwisely, he follows Read’s “Italianisation”

of Aldrevandinus into Aldrevandini and this is repeated in

The Golden Age of Venetian Glass.
But where did the

Aldrevandinus beaker really come from? — Syria, notably

Allepo or Damascus, or, less likely, from Persia (Iran/Iraq),

or was it from Venice, or further afield, such as

Constantinople, Corinth or even from northern Europe? Tait
concurred that the quality of the decoration was inadequate
for Syrian craftsmen; it is, in fact, very different as a trip to

the BM (Gallery 34, case 20) will readily confirm.

Islamic Flower Decoration

Islamic glass artists are particularly fond of both
floral and animal decoration. My attempt to find

parallels with the (largely ignored) stylised plants

with 3-lobed flowers identified a Syro-Egyptian

7
th

/8
th
century bowl and an 8
th

century fragment, both

with staining (S. Carboni,
Glass from Islamic

Lands); a
C. 13

th
painted bowl (Mentasti

et al., Mille

Anni di Arte del Vetro a Venezia),
and the C. 14

foot

of an enamelled bowl (Carboni again).

Three-lobed flowers and crinkle-edge leaves occur

together on a 9
th
century incised plate found in Iran

(Fig. 9) and, a rare occurrence, on a mosque lamp

(Fig. 8). These leaves are a relatively common form
of decorative infill. There is no known comparable

Venetian glass from this period and the painted dish
(Fig. 7) is of uncertain but probably Middle Eastern

origin. It is difficult to escape the obvious inference

that this plant is a long-established Islamic
decorative element. Kreuger favours the lily but my

preference is for the tulip that grew wild in Central

Asia. As early as 1000 AD. The tulip was cultivated

by the Turks and became highly prized in the West.

Flowers resembling tulips form decorative elements

on Islamic ceramics of the period.
In 1979, Hugh, in

The Golden Age…
described the beaker’s

main characteristics These are narrow bands of yellow

enamel outlined by bands of red enamel, two just below the
rim that contains the text, and one near the foot below the

main decoration (Fig. 1). In Islamic decoration, lines in

gold are outlined in red and Tait suggested the gilding had
been replaced by yellow enamel, either for cheapness or

because the artist simply did not know how to do it.

However, a few shards with traces of gilding have now

been recorded from various sites in Europe. The enamelling

was applied to both the outside and inside of the glass (Fig.
1). Common decorative features are outlining in white

enamel and typical stylised plants, the leaves and flowers

often painted in two colours, particularly red and blue

(Figs. 1,4). Also, for some beakers, a propeller-like element
is included in the spandrel of adjacent arches (Figs. 3, 4).

Adding to British interest, we are privileged to possess not

just the archetypal vessel in the BM but also a group of the
finest shards ever found. Probably representing eight
vessels, these came from an excavation in Foster Lane near

the Goldsmiths’ Hall in London; examples are prominently
displayed in the Museum of London (Fig. 4). They are so

stunning that I had make a second visit to convince myself

just how fine they are, They really do look as though they

have just come from the kiln, brilliantly enamelled on truly

colourless glass about 1 mm thick and with hardly a bubble
in sight. In fact, the quality of the glass appears better than

that of the Aldrevandinus beaker itself. They provided the

samples analysed by Ian Freestone mentioned overpage.
Other shards have also been found in England at Restormel

castle in Cornwall (Fig. 3. also on display in the BM),
Boston and, most recently, by Rachel Tyson rummaging in
a museum in York. A shard has even been found in Ireland.

Over what period were these beakers, and, it should be

mentioned, a few other vessels with similar decoration,
made? They seem to occur between the fall of Acre in 1291

when the last Crusaders crept home, and the mid-14′

century. The latter date is defined by a possible association
with the arms on the Aldrevandinus beaker with families in

a document known as the “Zuricher Wappenrolle”?, itself
dated to 1320-1330. Another document in the Venetian

archives extends the span to around 1350. (This,
incidentally, covers the time (1291) when the Venetian

Grand Council banished glass furnaces from Venice itself.)

Production was almost certainly brought to an abrupt end in
1348, however, when bubonic plague was carried from

Kaffa, in the Crimea, to the
sea

ports of Messina, Genoa

and Venice. It spread throughout Italy in a few months and
rapidly into France and the rest of Europe, killing an

estimated third of the population and bringing trade to a

standstill. It visited England in 1348 and Ireland in 1349
with similar devastating consequences. Not until 1446 is

there further Venetian documentary reference to a glass
painter and we begin to encounter fine Muranese enamelled

glass. This is the time when Angelo Barovier was re-

inventing what we now call
cristallo
and the old

glassmaking statutes of 1271 were replaced by a new set in
1441. Crystal glassmaking in Murano was not wiped out by

the plague but it definitely suffered a severe setback.

Of the fifty, or probably many more, beaker shards
discovered so far, ten or twelve are essentially complete.
Five, of slender shape, have the continuously flared outline,

LASS CIRCLE NEWS No. 107, 2006

although not the complex foot structure, associated with
Islamic beakers (Fig. 6) while the others are either simply

tapered, as found among Iranian cut beakers of the 10t
h

/11

t
h

centuries, or flared near the rim like the Aldrevandinus
beaker. Such local flaring can be associated with reshaping
if it had been partially melted during refiring as described

by Corning glassmaker, William Goodenrath. The
reshaping cannot continue too far down the inside of the
beaker or it would risk damaging the internal enamel

decoration (Fig. 1). Narrow straight-sided beakers flared at

the rim are a common Islamic shape. Hence, shape,
per se,

definitely has a Middle Eastern bias. In the 13′ and 14
t

centuries Islam continued to produce continuously flared
beakers (Fig. 6) that were exported in quantities to Asian

countries such as Russia. These were more sparsely
decorated with enamel quite unlike

the Aldrevandinus forms. The
diversity of shape of the

Aldrevandinus beakers makes one

wonder if a few plain Islamic glasses
ended up with Aldrevandinus

decoration applied elsewhere.

The decline of the Syro-Frankish
theory was accelerated with the
discovery by Italian historian, Luigi

Zecchin of the names of several
glass painters in the C.13`
11

/14t
h

Venetian archives. However, when in 1997 Rachel Ward

organised an important symposium at the BM,
Gilded and

Enamelled Glass from the Middle East,
evidence was

reviewed indicating Islam, at least, as the inspiration for

enamelling in Venice. The flared beaker is an Islamic shape

but hardly the wide-bodied form frequently found in the

Aldrevandinus group. The latter shape was not particularly
Venetian either at that time. Was it specially developed to
provide the maximum decorative surface and ease of access

for enamelling the interior? Also, as Tait pointed out, no
beakers have yet come to light that have both the

Aldrevandinus decoration and the relatively common
Syrian foot (Fig. 5).

Stefano
Carboni tells a fiction-based-on-fact story of one

Gregorio from Nauplia in the Peloponnese (South Greece).
A painter-decorator, possibly a refugee, he arrived in

Venice in
c.
1280, about the time the Crusaders were forced

out of Syria. Gregario failed to fulfil several commissions

to paint beakers, calculated by Zecchin as totalling some
4400 items. If Gregorio could paint 20 beakers every day,
with no two beakers exactly alike, this would represent a

minimum of 7 – 8 months work. Preparing the enamel
paints would involve considerable time in grinding the
lumps of enamel provided by the glassmaker. More

probably it took him several years and it is hardly

surprising that he took to the taverns for solace and ended

up recorded in the Venetian state archives. There is no

evidence that he actually painted Aldrevandinus-style
beakers. The original documentary context relates to a
contract with a ‘fiolario’? — normally translated as a vial

maker (Dillon says “bottle”) – who would not be expected

to make glass of the quality of the Aldrevandinus beakers

even if described as clear and bright (mozoli schieti;
`mozoli’ is old Italian for ‘drinking glass’ rather that

specifically for `beaker’); this would be the work of the

cristalleri (cristal glass makers). Vials and small bottles
might, however, be labelled more simply in relation to their

contents, such as oil or wine, as mentioned by Astone

Gasparetto in
Mille Anni Di Arte Del Vetro A Venezia

(1982). A small bottle, 7.8 cm tall, in the Glass Museum in
Liege, has inscribed between the usual red/yellow/red
bands the inscription [0]LMV[M] PROINFIRMIS,
probably an oil or potion for sickness or infirmity. On the

shoulder is an alchemical symbol like a letter M, possibly

indicating a distillate, a common way of making active

plant extracts in the Middle East back to Roman times.

Carboni weaves an enchanting story but its significance

could equally well lie in this humble little bottle.

Marco Verita analysed the glass itself from the
Aldrevandinus group, from C.14th Islam and from Venice
(c.1450 or later, so-called
vitrum

blanchum,
an early version of

cristallo).
He found them to be

virtually identical in composition and
he concluded that the alkali used was

allume catina
(best Syrian ash)

specified for use in Venetian

glassmaking from 1275 (Table 1).
However, David Whitehouse, in

Glass of the Sultans,
tells us that

between 1255 and, at least, 1277

quantities of glass lumps were
imported into Venice from Antioch.

So how reliable is the analytical data for proving a uniquely

Venetian origin for the Aldrevandinus glasses?

Unfortunately, the early Muranese recipes never mention
imported glass or even the use of cullet in their batches.

Verita
Freestone

Aidrevandin
Venice C.15th
Islamic
Islamic

SiO
2

69.111.33

67.8611.10
68.912.26
68.7211.17

A1
2
0,

0.9710.64
1.1310.45
1.1010.18 1.2210.18

Na
2
O
11.3910.89
12.7211.18
11.711.08

13.1411.25

K
2
O
2.4010.70

2.5010.60
2.5510.60
2.3810.64

CaO
9.7810.82
10.2811.27
7.9011.49

8.1311.09

MgO
3.2010.34
3.4010.82
3.4310.52

3.2210.68

Fe
2
0,
0.3510.10
0.3610.09
0.3710.10
0.4410.16

MnO
1.1010.28
0.5010.32
1.1710.38
1.1510.43

Table
1. Data showing the remarkably uniform composition of

glasses from the sources under consideration and the excellent
agreement between the analyses of Verita and of Freestone &

Stapleton on separate groups of glass samples. The Aldrevandinus
and Islamic glasses are from the late 13th and early 14th centuries.

No comparable Venetian glasses of this period were available for

analysis. Values are Mean%±S.D. (see Editorial)

Data from R. Ward,
Gilded and Enamelled Glasses from the Middle East.

Enamels, as well as the glass, were made by the

glassmaker. Goodenrath, based on his own experiments,

suggests that after painting the beakers had to be refired

fixed to a pontil by the glassmaker who made them. This is
because the red and blue more thinly painted enamels had

similar melting points to the glass itself. It is, however, a

wasteful use of a glass furnace, the wood for which has to

be imported, compared with a dedicated muffle furnace

operated by an experienced enameller. Also, several of the

beakers do not appear to have been reshaped (Figs 6, 11).

Gianfranco Toso
(Murano, A History of Glass)
tells us that

in Venice enamels were principally supplied to the

Guide to Types of Medieval Glass

Based on the amount of alkali – Sodium (Na),

Potassium (K), and Magnesium (Mg) – found

by analysis of the glass.

ROMAN:
High Na, negligible K and Mg,

derived from Egyptian salt lakes

ISLAMIC and VENETIAN:
High Na and Mg,

Low K, plant ash derived mainly from Syrian
and other littoral shores in the area.

NORTH EUROPEAN:
High K and Mg, Low

Na, derived mainly from forest trees and ferns.

GLASS CIRCLE NEWS No. 107, 2006

goldsmiths. Would these goldsmiths have done their own
firing or were there specialist enamellers for that purpose in

this highly regulated society? It is a tenuous argument to
suggest that the enamels had to be fired by the glassmaker

that made the beakers. The only 14
th

century Venetian

document to mention enamel relates to Murano glassmaker,

Giovanni Deolay who was allowed to work his furnace for

this purpose during the annual vacation. But, as discussed
below, much restoration work involving enamel mosaics

was going on in the city at that time, notably S. Marco, the
Baptistery and the Chapel of S’Isidoro; there is no

indication this enamel was being used to paint beakers.

Scientific analysis of shards from the Foster Lane site by

Ian Freestone confirmed that the red and blue enamels and

the beaker were made from the same glass recipe. But this
is not surprising in the light of Muranese recipes as early as

1450, or earlier, examined by Cesare Moretti and Tullio

Toninato
(Ricette vetraria del Rinascinamento, 2001).

For

that is exactly how they were made by adding colouring
agents to a basic glass. Exceptions were white and yellow
enamel where high concentrations of lead and tin were

added to the base glass in different proportions. One would
expect these additives to lower the melting point just as

lead glass has a lower melting point than soda glass. The

compositions differ somewhat from those in Islamic glass

but such recipes are not written in tablets of stone.

As well as Gregorio, other painters have been identified in
the Venetian archives, Donino and Paolo, brothers of

Bartolomeo da Zara from Dalmatia, are mentioned in
1290: Donino is listed as a painter of drinking glasses as
late as 1345. Bartolomeus, listed in the archives, occurs as a

signature on two of the Foster Lane shards (Fig. 4); but the
name is a common one and there is no certainty that they

are one and the same individual. Another name in the

archives that has been identified on a beaker is Petrus, the
name itself going back to 1083 in a reference to “Petrus

Fiolarius Flabanicus”. A beaker bearing the name
.ERTRUS (the dot indicates a missing letter) was found in

Mainz and is probably his work (Fig. 10). Another painter
listed is Zannus Totulus although nothing seems to be

known of his work. I was unable to determine how many of

these decorators were established natives of Venice.

Variations in the style of decorating and spelling on the
beakers support the view that many painters were involved.

A common sentiment is “AVE MARIA GRACIA PLENA”

with `gracia’ spelt GRCIA, GRATIA, GRC.IA or GRACI.
On two beakers we find AMOR VINCIT OMNIA while a
shard from Metz has the curious sequence .ACNETAM.

which could be a Latin abbreviation for ‘grace and love’?
Overall, including the beakers without text, several painted

with animals (Fig. 11), the subject matter seems aimed at a
diverse section of the population with themes that are
clearly not Islamic. Islamic text is not found on any beaker

of the Aldrevandinus group.

The evidence so far, then, turning away from the Syro-
Frankish theory, has tended perhaps to over-emphasize that

in favour of Murano. Nevertheless, the Middle East may

still claim to be the inspiration for, and possibly a

contributor to, the manufacture of Aldrevandinus beakers.
This brings us to the once vast but steadily declining

Byzantine empire, particularly Constantinople and Corinth
where several Aldrevandinus-type shards have been found.

Gregorio was Greek and in the 13t
h

century Corinth was a

relatively unstable city, being sequentially conquered by the

Normans, Franks, Byzantines, Turks, Venetians and then

again by the Turks. Emigrating to Venice might well have

been a safe option for him.

David Whitehouse’s presentation at Rachel Ward’s
symposium concerned gilding but mentions the

contribution of 12
th

century author of
De Diversis Artibus,

Theophilus who describes how coloured “enamels” were
made. Axel von Saldern, in the same volume, states “Fine
clear and colourless glass must certainly have been made in

Constantinople, which was the centre of production of
polychrome enamels…”. The best known example is a bowl

in the St Marks’ Treasury brought to Venice by the

crusaders after 1204. An 11
t

h/12
t

h century commercial link

between Venice and Corinth is suggested by Attilia

Dorigato in
Murano Island of Glass.
This relates to the

widespread use of
moili de girlanda et imperlati —
glasses

opulently decorated with threading and small prunts. No
less important, Byzantine artists were employed to repair

the mosaics of S. Marco; but, surprisingly, the mosaics they

used were reported by Freestone in
Science and the Past

have been made with North European wood or fern ash
rather than with Syrian ash as might have been anticipated!

How can these contradictory findings be explained?

Mosaic tesserae, possibly made in Corinth, were also

suggested to have been used to colour glass found at the
Hamwic (1998) excavations near Southampton. But these
relate to the Saxon period and analyses indicate that the

glass found there, like that from the venerable Bede’s abbey

in Monkswearmouth, was made with Egyptian salt lake

soda. This underlines the fact that trade between East and
West had been practiced for nearly half a millennium. As

Freestone suggests, European raw materials for the S.

Marco mosaics were perhaps exported to Byzantium to

meet an exceptional demand at that time. It would explain

why Giovanni Deolay was allowed to work his furnace

during the holiday period.

The Byzantine evidence, then, cannot be left out of the story.

Costantinople and Corinth must have been deeply involved
in Middle Eastern glassmaking practice. Possible evidence

that at least some Aldrevandinus beakers may have been
made there, perhaps those of Saracenic shape, comes from a

comment by Donald Harden in Medieval Archaeology,

(1978). “Glass fragments found in Southampton depict part

of a roundel frequently found on Byzantine bottles but seem
to be unknown on any other Syro-Frankish glass.

Significantly, these are enamelled red on the inside and

yellow, green and possibly white on the outside.”

Finally, the possibility of a North European origin must be
considered. As cited above, the proposal was originally
linked by Tait to the absence of gilding and the poor

technical and artistic quality of the decoration. Might this
decline in quality reflect a commercial response to popular

demand? Herein lies a number of problems the main one

being the composition of the artefacts themselves.

First, is it true to say that such glass could only be made in

Murano? After contemplating the Museum of London

shards I wandered round the museum and came across the

GLASS CIRCLE NEWS No. 107, 2006

displayed coffin of a 4
th
century rich Roman lady. Within it

were two quite thick but almost colourless glass perfume
containers, perhaps, it said, made in the Rhine area. Some

of the world’s finest glassmaking sand, low in iron, comes

from the continent, so if a crystal quality glass was possible

in the 4
th

century why not the 13
th
? By contrast, Henkes and

Henderson found that a particular type of C. 17
th
“spun-

stem” roemer, attributed to the Netherlands, was
nevertheless made with glass that had a high sodium, low

potassium content indicating imported Near Eastern alkali .

Such facts clearly undermine any conclusions from an

otherwise convincing report by Marco Verita
(J. Glass

Studies)
that nine Aldrevandinus shards from German sites

were all made of the same Venetian-type glass (see Table

1) with what is possibly Venetian-type enamelling.

Reports of several beaker fragments reveal that
not all of the glass used to make them was of the

same high quality. Some have a more bubbly

metal; one is a pinkish brown (picture right) and

other examples are deliberately coloured red and

blue, as well as the ordinary bottle already

mentioned. By the 14th century, fine enamelled

metal-ware and stained glass, mainly for
three samples and not statistically significant. On the other

hand, Julian Henderson finds a convincing correlation

between the cobalt in Islamic blue glass (7 samples) and

French translucent blue glass (24 samples) of the same
period. He suggests Anorak, near Tabriz in Iran as the

source and suggests that “lumps of blue frit” were traded

between the two areas. Bernard Gratuze
et al.

in
BM

Occasional Paper 109,
also find the same cobalt type in a

diverse group of medieval French glass but, by contrast,

they attribute the source to the Erzgebirge mountains of

North Bohemia and the Syrian-style alkali to the south of
France! Further, the enamel used for precious metal
artefacts attributed to the Meuse region (about which
Theophilus writes) also had the same high sodium, low

potassium content. It seems that this composition is not a
certain indication of origin. Clearly, the Saracen final

conquest of Syria was not
necessarily

a barrier

to continuing trade with the west and that one
way or another the requisite exchange of raw

materials
could

have continued with Northern

Europe. Equally, they might have come from

Venetian sources but yielding an essentially

similar scientific fingerprint.

religious buildings, was already well developed

Such decoration by North European glass

in northern Europe. Theophilus is believed to

painters, if it occurred, is unlikely to have been

have been German which helps explain his

initially a speculative enterprise. Rather, as for

Aldrevandinus-type .

understanding of coloured glass. Fired-on

nainted windows, it would have been a

beaker with griffin

enamel, made with finely powdered glass is only

decoration.

commission and the equivalent of a glass-

a small step removed from fired stained glass in The Hedwig beaker of painter’s `videmus’, a drawn outline design,
which only the pigments, and perhaps a flux, are slightly earlier date, in provided as guidance. Concerning design, it is

used. The manufacture of glass enamels could the BM, gallery 34, is interesting that a 3-lobed ‘leaf ‘, not unlike that

have been quickly solved if there was a demand carved with a griffin.

found on the beakers, also forms part of the

to produce beakers that carried the religious

repeat border pattern in the great west window,
c.

1339, of

message of the eclesiastical windows into the private home.

York Minster.

Saxon glass, probably of German origin, has been found

with trailed on white enamel (Fig. 12). Further, we are told

by Richard Marks in
English Medieval Industries
that

treating both sides of cathedral glass to reinforce images
was well established by the 13
th
century. Gilding, on the

other hand was not part of the glass painter’s repertoire. But

there were architectural gilders and manuscript decorators

that might later have become involved for a few specimens.

The Hanseatic merchants thought initially to have provided

the European market with enamelled beakers imported
from Murano might equally have imported them

undecorated. These merchants, because of the dominance

of their trade support for Murano , were allowed to export a
proportion of their Venetian purchases free from export

duty. More glasses could be exported if undecorated, just as

England found later that it was cheaper to import un-

ground “coaching glasses”. If the trouble experienced by

the Venetian glassmakers with Gregorio is any guide this

might well have been a preferred business deal.

But what about the enamel being formed from the same

glass as the beaker? In practice, glass exporters always had

to allow for breakage in transport thereby ensuring a supply
of shards that could be ground with pigment to make
enamel. Not much enamel is required to decorate one
beaker. However, the white and yellow enamel used could

have been a problem as these were not colours used by the

glass painters and might have had to be specially imported.

Freestone finds a difference between Islamic and

Aldrevandinus-type white enamel but it is only based on
Underlying these uncertainties is the fact that that although

the Aldrevandinus beaker has become the archetypal form
we know almost nothing about Aldrevandinus himself.
From the dating he seems unlikely to have been a

contemporary of Bartolomeus or the much maligned

Gregorio. The statement on the beaker could indicate that it

was to celebrate emergence from apprenticeship or that it

was made, like a videmus, as an example for apprentices to

copy, or even to advertise his studio, wherever that might
have been. The authority on this subject, Ingeborg Krueger,

states
(J. Glass Studies)
that she believes that the wording

has no significance at all!

Even his nationality is in question. Following Read,

Honey and Tait, Aldrevandin(i) is tacitly assumed to be

Italian. He is not listed in the Venetian archives although
a possible link turns up in a document in Florence of

April 4, 1331. This is to “Aldovrandino fiolaro” (note

spelling). Could our painter also have been a vial maker

or, perhaps, a relative? Documentary reference is not an

indication of nationality any more than Verzelini was

English! If we rewrite his name as Aldre-van-Din the
`van’, in Dutch meaning ‘from’ or ‘of’ indicates a Low

Countries or perhaps Germanic origin, areas important

for both glassmaking and, particularly, glass painting as

suppliers of window glass, including to England. An
unscientific trawl on the web revealed the name, Andre-

van-Duin, a live Dutch celebrity, and I was gratified to

discover that although Ludwig van Beethoven was born
in Bonn his family came from Belgium. The word or

GLASS CIRCLE NEWS No. 107, 2006

syllable ‘van’ is definitely not part of Italian vocabulary.
All this means is that it is unwise to infer that

Aldrevandin(i) provides evidence that these beakers were
made in Venice although he, or some of his relatives,

may have gone to Tuscany.

This review, if anything, reveals what a complex and

confusing literature currently surrounds our attempts to

understand the history of the Aldrevandinus group of

enamelled beakers. The authors seem often to raise more
problems than they solve. From a commercial angle there

must have been something to stimulate the demand in the
first place. There are enough shards discovered of beakers

with the concave Saracenic shape and elements of
Saracenic decoration to support a Middle- or Near-Eastern

inspired origin and a connection, perhaps via Costantinople

or Corinth, relating to trophies brought by the returning
crusaders. This quickly fell away and the Hanseatic
merchants saw a trading opportunity to fill a new demand

with replicas from Venice. Perhaps these, initially painted

by Byzantine emigrants, set the Saracenic-based style of

the characteristic art-work but with the script in Latin.
Local European industry then took up the challenge either
by enamelling imported plain beakers or even making their

own. Exporters/importers cashed in on a lucrative trade in
raw materials. The beakers developed a unique broader

shape more amenable to decoration, and established glass

painting solutions of using both the inside and outside of

the beaker were adopted, perhaps for speed (the inside can
be painted while the outside is still wet) and to prevent the

enamels from running into each other during firing. The

subjects of the decoration itself were widened to satisfy
both religious and secular demand. This whole industry

flourished for some seventy years creating relatively cheap

and cheerful must-have keep-sakes — with a few exceptions

bearing toasts they were not intended for regular drinking –
in an otherwise rather drab market. It was terminated,

within months, if not weeks, by bubonic plague in 1348. A
century was to elapse before the luxury glass industry

recovered with the emergence of
cristallo

and enamelled

goblets in Murano.

Even if this speculative picture is roughly correct we have
no information about the time change at each stage of the

sequence, how long each lasted and to what extent they

overlapped. In particular, there is still no hard evidence that

manufacture ever took place in Northern Europe. Was
Read right all along? Further archaeological finds,
documentation and more extensive analyses will hopefully

help clarify the picture in the future.

For the glass historian it remains an important transitional

time of glassmaking that will continue to challenge our

understanding of a difficult and unstable period. From a

Venetian perspective it helps demonstrate how imported
raw materials, and the inclusion of pure quartz and crushed

pebbles in the batch reflect a technical understanding of

how to make top quality crystal in the early 14th century

long before Barovier perfected his famous
cristallo.
HENUZY’S CuPPINIGS

Admiral Lord Nelson cameo

The above image was taken from the sales catalogue of

Historical Medals and Works of Art, May issue, by

specialist dealer, Timothy Mallett, Ltd. London.

The uniformed bust portrait of Nelson is in white glass,

signed on the truncation WARNER F., mounted on a blue

glass background and contained within a paper mache
frame with integral gilt-brass ring suspension. Size 75 x 94

mm.

Warner is recorded as being a gem engraver at the end of

the 18th century. A Tassie portrait of Adam Smith in 1787

was reproduced in cameo by Warner.

CORRECTION re the Leith Goblet

NOT “Not necessarily by a member of the

Beilby family”.

My description in GCN 106 of the Leith Goblet sold at

auction by Lyon & Turnbull elicited the following

response from our member George Neilson.

“As a former curator of the Drambuie collection with
special responsibility for the glass section I co-operated
closely with Campbell Armour the Ceramics and Glass

expert of Lyon and Turnbull on the various descriptions of

the glasses in the catalogue and we agreed that the glass was
most probably decorated by William and Mary Beilby”

The catalogue states “decorated by the Beilby family”; I
now concur, with full apologies for any offence caused by

my error, that this description is accurate. *

It is gratifying for The Glass Circle to know that our late

Hon. President, Hugh Tait was both a custodian of the
Aldrevandinus beaker and a significant contributor towards

understanding its wider significance. *

NB Check out
this fine new site, www.discoverislamicart.orq
Peter Rath, owner of J & L Lobmeyer

will be

speaking on
No History for the Crystal Chandelier
at

the Ruskin Glass Centre, Stourbridge, at 3.00 pm on
Sat. 29th August, 2006, as part of this year’s

International Festival of Glass.

9
For more details consult ifg.org.uk

GLASS CIRCLE NEWS No. 107, 2006

Peter Dreiser M.B.E. (1936 – 2006)
an appreciation by Katherine Coleman

Members of The Glass Circle will be sad to hear of the death of Peter Dreiser on 4th April 2006

after a long battle with cancer. Peter was Britain’s greatest 20th century wheel engraver on glass,
one of the last to be trained in the full Bohemian tradition, one of a chain of masters reaching right

back beyond the 18th century. He was also a great teacher of glass engraving techniques; more
practising glass engravers in Britain have been taught by him than by any other.

Born in Cologne in 1936, his father worked as a railway Tina were married on 20
t
h July 1957. They always

engineer while his grandfather was a prosperous maintained that each had the characteristics of the other’s

nurseryman and expert on the weaving of fine velvet. country, Tina the organiser, Peter the easy-going, gentle

When Peter was a child they all survived, in their

free spirit.

nightclothes, the firebombing of Cologne and several years

as unwelcome refugees in Bavaria. Peter’s wartime Tina helped Peter find a better job with a glass firm in 1958,
misfortune and lack of education turned out to his and our supervising enamelling by silk screen onto glass. In his
advantage in that he encountered the new State School for spare time, Peter constructed an engraving lathe of his own

Art Glass at Rheinbach in Germany, founded in 1948 with and began to engrave once more from the broom cupboard

the cream of the refugee Czech Bohemian engravers. There in their tiny flat. To start with, he had no success selling his
he fell in love with glass engraving instantly, completely, work — Harrods’ and Liberty’s buyers were not interested.

and for ever, at the sight of Otto Pietsch in his little studio However, one day he approached Leathers & Snook, a glass

gently and exquisitely engraving the cheeks of a fox. He shop in Piccadilly, where Mr. Leather spotted his talent and

trained in glass engraving and design at the Rheinbach Mrs. Snook introduced him to Thomas Goode where he

Glasfachschule under Otto Pietsch and Fritz GlOssner soon secured employment as their resident glass engraver.

(from Steinschonau, now Kamenicky enov) from 1951 to He worked there until 1970 when he decided to become
1954.

freelance.

His training proved to be of little immediate use in post-war While working for Thomas Goode, Peter customarily spent
Germany and it was in 1955 that he came to England, his lunch break and spare time at the Victorian and Albert
recruited by Century Glass Works Ltd in Edmonton, a glass Museum studying its great glass collection and so came to

factory run by a Bohemian Jewish family, producing glass know Robert Charleston. They learned a great deal from

items for Woolworths (see GC News 103, p.16). During each other. It was through his association with Robert that

this time he met his future wife Jovita Antonia Martinez he joined The Glass Circle where he became respected by
Cue, daughter of the famous Spanish musicologist, the members for his quiet, considered opinions and

Eduardo Martinez Tomer who had studied at Madrid and knowledge. At weekends, Peter would prowl the Portobello
Paris, friend of De Falla, Debussy, Faure, Saint-Seans,

Road street markets for beautiful late 18
t

h and early 19
th

Dukas and Maurice Ravel. Returning to Spain in 1914 century cut glass, then out of fashion and unappreciated.
Martinez Touter had toured the country, collecting folk

songs & music, published the Cancionero Asturiano and Bizarre ideas of dating engraving by means of analysing
Cancionero Gallego until the Civil War in Spain brought magnified images for grit marks or fanciful theories about
his work to a standstill. As head of
la Seccion de Folklore

the engraving of
diatreta
he treated with the contempt they

del Centro de Estudios Historicos
in Madrid, Martinez deserved. The former because any self respecting copper

Torner lectured at La Residencia de Estudiantes with Lorca wheel engraver can imitate old grits by the simple

and Dali who drew a lovely caricature him, also Bunuel expedient of mixing modern ones, the latter because — as

who before his film studies was a soldier in the artillery and Josef Welzel has since proved — they were definitely cut by
an amateur boxer. Martinez Touter arrived as a refugee in wheel rather than drilled like ivory. Peter always advised

England on 3r
d
September 1939 and worked for the BBC, students to study carefully and critically the modelling and

lecturing on Spanish folk music and literature in Oxford, style of the engraving to establish where possible the true

Cambridge and King’s College London. In 1955, he died of author of unsigned and dated work, bearing in mind all the
cancer. When the Spanish Cultural Attache came to offer, characteristics of the glass itself, where the age of the glass
from the then Spanish government, every post he had was not certain. He also advised engravers to avoid
before leaving the country he replied “I rather sweep the engraving on antique glass, not only because older glass is

streets of London than return to fascist Spain”. Peter and brittle and unpleasant to engrave but also because having

1
0

GLASS CIRCLE NEWS No. 107, 2006

survived to this day, antique glass commands respect.
Peter Dreiser once told me that he regretted having to spend

so much of his life doing ‘bread and butter engraving’ when

he was already acknowledged as a great artist on glass.

However his work is testament to the latter, with its strong

theme of concern for the natural world. This will live on in
public and private collections — the V&A, The Science

Museum, Broadfield House Glass Museum, The Corning

Museum of Glass in the USA, Nottingham Museum, the
Ulster Museum, the Fitzwilliam to name just a few. For

many years he worked on major pieces of crystal for royalty
and for Her Majesty The Queen. Peter was very proud to

receive an honorary MBE last year and the position of

Honorary Liveryman of the Worshipful Company of Glass
Sellers — the MBE particularly pleased and amused him as a

German national, having started his life with a singularly
different opinion about the British and their Empire and the

second honour was very cheerfully and proudly received

with full ceremony at his bedside.

In 1975, along with Laurence Whistler and David Peace,
Peter Dreiser became a founding member of the Guild of

Glass Engravers, one of the first of the Guild Fellows and
an active Vice-President. Peter taught glass engraving at

Morley College in Lambeth for 25 years and at Branch

workdays of the Guild of Glass Engravers. As a teacher and

mentor Peter was generosity itself to all serious students.

His name is renowned both here, in Rheinbach and
Kamenicky enov where they refer to his wonderful book
that he wrote with Jonathan Matcham as the Bible of glass
engraving. He taught by example, with great patience and

humour. Many of his students went on to enjoy successful

careers as glass engravers themselves. They include such
names as Jacqueline Allwood, Jo Birrell, Virginia Bliss, Jill

and Peter Chaplin, Elly Eliades, Elaine Freed, Josephine

Harris, Clare Henshaw, Isabelle Liddle, Stanley Serota,
Thomas Standage, Katharine Coleman and Hilary Virgo.

There is a detailed account of Peter Dreiser’s career on tape
recorded by the British Library’s National Life Story series.

David Mocatta captured Peter engraving on glass for future
generations in a beautiful film. Even last October Peter was
propped up in bed sorting through boxfuls of negatives and

slides for the heavily revised and updated second edition of

his book,
‘Techniques of Glass Engraving’,

to be published

by A&C Black in October. For many years Peter was also

Vice-President of the Royal Society of Miniaturists,

Sculptors and Gravers, now known as the Royal Miniature

Society. Collectors, connoisseurs and curators all turned to

him for information on both British and Bohemian

engraved glass.

A modest and retiring man, despite his 6ft 8ins stature, like
many really great artists Peter seemed oblivious of his

extraordinary skills and charisma. He seldom entered

competitions. But glass enthusiasts, other engravers and
miniaturists recognised him for what he was: a veritable

giant in his field, an absolute master of copper wheel

engraving and
the
authority on engraved glass past and

present. Those members of The Glass Circle who came on

the visit to the Czech Republic in 2002 will remember his
expertise on knowledge of Bohemian engraving and glass

decoration; already ill, the sight of so much beautiful glass

greatly cheered him. At every museum the cry went up

“Peter, Peter, come here and tell us
1

”

Peter’s family may not have always enjoyed his obsession

with glass — but they, like us, profited from his insatiable
curiosity and creativity — his gardening green fingers
inherited from his grandfather (a polymath like Peter), his

engineering skills from his father and brother, his cooking

and love of sweet biscuits. Who else would take their first
car apart, literally into pieces, before they drove it, just in

case it broke down? Peter’s children Rodrigo and Theresa
have clearly inherited his talents with photography, Marina

his patience and design skills. He loved nature and music,

both of which he successfully realised in glass. He was also

a more than competent linguist.

He is survived by his wife Tina and children Rodrigo,
Marina and Theresa and two grandchildren. Born in

Cologne, Germany on the 11t
h
June 1936, he died of cancer

in London on 4 April 2006. *

Glass Circle Matters

New Members
Mr. P. Daniels

Mrs. A.M. Horne

Dr. J. Kemp
Mr. A.M. Pullan.

E-mail Addresses of Members

Glass Circle Members who have given their e-mail

addresses to the Hon. Membership Secretary will
have recently received an e-mail from the Hon.

Secretary. If you have an e-mail address and have

NOT received this communication please send your

e-mail address as soon as possible to
[email protected]. The Committee intention

is to send communications by this medium wherever

possible.

GC News 108 Publication Date
The next issue of GC News is scheduled for
September. Copy please by mid – August if possible.

Compare that to today in the college hot shop where most

students are girls (unthinkable in the 60s) and several were
of ‘a certain age’. Pictures were shown to illustrate how in

Left.
Interior view of

the IGC with
a

student from Sweden

working in the chair.

Right.
Blown bowl

decorated with blue

and white cane

inclusions made by

our speaker.

All

‘pictures

are

GLASS CIRCLE NEWS No. 107, 2006

FROM BUBBLE TO BOWL

by Jane Dorner

A lecture given to the Glass Circle at The Art Workers’ Guild on

Tuesday 21st. March 2006.

The hosts for this meeting were Mr L.A. Trickey, Mr K. Cannell,

Mr
R.E.
Chatfield and Dr B. Clarke.

The hall was well-filled for Jane Dorner’s talk on her year as a

student at the International Glass Centre (IGC). She started by
showing a slide of some of her own collection of 18t
h

century

drinking glasses (cover picture) and said her interest was in

twists and latticino. Her year experiencing glass-making at
first hand had made her a more discerning collector, and she

would return to this at the end of the talk.

The author ladles
hot glass in a casting session.

The courses in glass making techniques and technologies at

the IGC are amongst Britain’s best-kept secrets. It is one of

the few design-based teaching establishments where
students from all over the world learn a full range of glass-

making techniques. There are not many places in the world

where you can do all these things, and the full-time courses
are free to EU students of all ages. There is even a learner

support fund to help people relocate.

To illustrate the mouth-watering tasters from a whole series

of hors d’oeuvres, Jane divided her talk into 7 sections in
which she gave a whistle-stop tour of the course. These

covered the following with many slides illustrating her own
progress as well as finished work made by fellow students:

1.
Hot glass –
blowing, casting, lampworking, bead-

making.

2.
Kiln forming –
painting with stains, enamels and

lustres, fusing and laminating, casting, pate de verre,
experimenting with inclusions, making moulds, slumping
into them, using coloured fits and shards, programming

different types of kiln.

3.
Cold working –
sandblasting, wheel cutting, engraving,

polishing, sawing, cameo, Graal.

4.
Stained glass –
copper foil, leading, stencilling and

electroplating.

5.
Technology –
composition of glass, batch calculations,

how furnaces are built, using a polariscope.

6.
Design –
sketchbooks, PhotoShop, internet research.

7.
Assessment –

record-keeping, setting up exhibitions.
The IGC is based in Brierley Hill and is part of Dudley

College. It has a truly remarkable set of workshops kitted

out with all the appropriate equipment.

The one-year full-time course, gives students an Open

College Networks Access Module certificate at Level 3 and
students are expected to get 16 out of the 24 credits

available as
a quid pro quo
of enjoying a free course

—

keep it going for future years. The range activities involved

was so great that one could not get through everything the
course demands without a willingness to give it your fullest

focus. Our speaker spent every available minute in the

workshops and all her time out of them designing. There are

part-time courses as well.

The workshops were first set up to provide practical skills
in order to train apprentices on day release from the many

glass-houses in the surrounding area. This was in the 1960s
when almost every family in Stourbridge and Brierley Hill

would have had several members in the glass industry.

Nevertheless, they were locked into the apprenticeship

system — one, Jane felt, held back its young trainees who

would start at 15 as a taker-in (the lad who breaks the pieces
off the punty iron and puts them in the lehr where they cool

overnight), then progressed to being a gatherer (bringing
glass to the master in the chair) finally rising to a master
blower (or gaffer) only after a minium of 5 years.

GLASS CIRCLE NEWS No. 107, 2006

Three of
the goblets made by Jane at
the

Istanbul Summer School, her technical skill not
quite matching her design ambitions!

24 teaching weeks — and only 5 hours a week taking it in

turns to be in the chair — Jane had progressed from making
a shapeless blob on the end of a punty iron to a small salad
bowl decorated with twisted cane that she had pulled

herself, together with the aid of the technician. Wobbly, she

agreed, but it
is

possible to learn a great deal in a short time

and a great pleasure for someone who is a collector of

twisted cane glass.

Though at first the experience had proved too hot (up to

1500°C), too difficult, too dangerous, and impossible to
control stuff that is white hot and fluid at one moment, and

stiff and unmalleable minutes later, Jane got hooked on
glass blowing and is now looking to see where her next

`fix’ is coming from. Not many of the complete beginners

did
achieve ‘control’, but they all got remarkably far

towards doing so.

Our speaker’s
forte
turned out to be drill engraving — a

technique she knew almost nothing about and
didn’t even

like.
As a collector, her taste in wine glasses was for

undecorated purity of shape. This view has since changed

because the optical illusions that can be achieved with

engraving feed a personal interest in ambiguity of
perception. Ambiguity was demonstrated again in another

slide of a giant comma made of fused optical lenses that had
been exhibited at the Red House Cone in July 2005 with a

story-teller accompanying the piece. On the table, along

Drill-engraved plate that won the John Davies Memorial
Award for the best progress in glass decoration.
Goblet,

the stem cased pale blue inside, by second-year

student, Caroline Scully that was short-listed for the Bombay
Sapphire award. The design is inspired by a ball gown.

with
other examples of blown work for our inspection, was

an engraved plate (below left) for which she was given an

award.

To end end her talk Jane showed again the shapeless blob

that had been her first attempt at blowing, and then a set of

12 assorted goblets (above left) blown at the Glass Furnace
near Istanbul just weeks after the IGC course had ended. We

were told how thrilled she was to have achieved these

jaunty wineglasses and then returned to a picture of the
most expensive glass she had ever bought: Lot 181,

Sotheby’s November 1999 – a quadruple-knopped airtwist

of
c.
1750. Experience had left its mark! “Now that I have

tried to do an airtwist myself, I can appreciate the skill

involved. It is far from easy. Nevertheless, mine probably

took 10 minutes to make, and though the four knops make it

relatively unusual, there’s something unsatisfying about the

way they are drawn out. At the talk, I asked what Sotheby’s
was doing charging such high prices. Audience laughter

suggested echoing thoughts, but it was pointed out to me
afterwards that it isn’t Sotheby’s so much as market forces.

Still, I will be a different sort of collector from now on.”

Originally
Brierley Hill Technical Institute, it
then

became the local Public Library and displayed part of
the glass collection now at Broadfield House, the

International Glass Centre as it is today.

Applications for the year beginning September 2007 to
john.tavloredudleycol.ac.uk or visit the website at

www.dudleycol.ac.uk/glass/. For the Istanbul two-week

summerschools, email arts_educationaalassfurnace.orq, or visit

www.glassfurnace.orq.

GLASS CIRCLE NEWS No. 107, 2006

06
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The Portico Library in Manchester is one of a handful that

survive of the many private subscription libraries founded at

the turn of the C.18th by the professional and commercial
middle classes. The London Library is the best known and

most successful, but Manchester’s still thrives, and this year

celebrates its bicentenary. The Portico occupies a purpose

built building by Thomas Harrison of Chester that opened its
doors on 20th January 1806, and its Great Room still has

working the wind indicator that allowed the Proprietors (for so
members were, and are still, called) to see when the wind was

favourable for the cotton clippers to dock in Liverpool, thus

suggesting that it was time to adjourn to the Cotton Exchange.
The library publishes occasional booklets on pertinent

subjects, and one entitled “Portico 1806; the Founding

Fathers” has just been issued, revealing an unexpected snippet
of information concerning acid etching of glass before 1800.

Dr. Edward Holme (born in 1770) was a man of wide interests
beyond his profession of medicine, for which he received his

doctorate at Leyden in 1793, and he read a number of learned
papers to the Manchester Literary and Philosophical Society, a

few of which were published in their Journal. One that is

recorded as being delivered in 1796 was “Observations on the

art of etching on glass”, although unfortunately this was not
one of those printed. If this title means what it seems to, it is a

far earlier reference to acid etching on glass than is given in

Charles Hajdamach’s book, where 1820 is the earliest
reference recorded. One obviously is slightly uncertain as to

whether the unqualified reference to ‘Etching’ meant acid

etching, but amongst the Portico’s books is an almost

contemporary 1818 edition of Johnson’s dictionary, which in a

very prolix definition confirms that etching was a process in
which the object was covered in resist, a design scribed

through this and then ‘bitten’ with acid. This would seem to

indicate that etching had then the specific meaning that it still

has today.

Another interesting glass snippet, this time concerning the

widespread use of glass dessert vessels in the last quarter of the

seventeenth century, occurs in Roy Strong’s latest book, on

the British Coronation Ceremonies. He illustrates a 1687
engraving of the table layout of the coronation banquet of
King James II in 1685, together with a part of the key to what

the dishes were. The engraving is titled: “The manner of
Placing the Mess on their Majesties Table being 145 several

dishes”. The illustration shews four, footed salvers, one at
each corner of the table, together with three elaborate central

displays of dessert glassware, the central large round platter
being surrounded by six large alternating with six small footed

salvers, and midway between the centre and the ends of the

table were square salvers, or platters, each surrounded by four

large and four small round salvers. Unfortunately the portion

of the key that is printed covers only two of the corner salvers,

one carrying ‘Pistachio Cream in Glasses’ and the other
`Three Dozen Glasses of Lemon Jelly’. The three central

arrangements were very much larger, and must have carried an
interesting selection of goodies. We have elsewhere another,

earlier reference to James and dessert glassware, in 1680 when

he was still just Duke of York, and banished to Edinburgh at

the time of the Exclusion Crisis. Edinburgh Corporation gave

him a dinner, and it is recorded that the breakages included 36
glass trenchers, 16 stalked plates and 12 jelly glasses; two

silver mounted knives were also ‘lost’, presumably pocketed

by a guest as a memento of the occasion. (One is reminded of

Sir Walter Scott at the banquet given to George IV in
Edinburgh in 1822; Sir Walter placed two of the drinking

glasses from the table into the pockets of his tailcoat as
mementos, but later heedlessly sat down with disastrous

results for the glasses.) It is worth reflecting that dessert glass

as a ratio to drinking glass shewed dessert glass to be much

more important (for private purchasers at least) in the seventy-

five years prior to 1750 than in the ensuing seventy-five years.

From the bills known to me, in the earlier period there were

sold 757 pieces of dessert glass representing about 40% of the
number of drinking vessels, whilst in the later period there

were only 250 dessert glasses, representing just 8% of the

drinking glasses recorded as sold, with both types usually

appearing on the same bills.

Tumblers make an interesting contrast to dessert glassware,
for they increased in popularity as the C.18th progressed,
rather than declining as did dessert glass. Some collectors find

tumblers uninteresting, coarse and plebeian even, and
certainly they cannot display the variety and elegance that
wine glasses do. Nearly twenty years ago John Brooks
published a booklet on tumblers, which used decorative

treatments of tumblers as the major determinant of date, and

largely concentrated on the nineteenth century. Tumblers

provide a good surface for commemorative decoration and are

not infrequently dated, aiding Brooks’ approach of

considering the vessel and estimating its date, the exact

reverse of using data from bills of sale that are firmly dated,

but leave the form uncertain. Brooks also pondered the
difference, if any, between tumblers and beakers, concluding

that for post restoration glass in Britain the terms are
synonymous. Glasses sold as ‘beakers’ are rare in C.18th

Britain, but there is a bill of 1757 from Thomas Betts that lists

both a ‘pair of Gilt Beakers’ @ 42d. each and also 12
`Tumblers Hol
d
‘ @ 14d. each, so Betts must have

differentiated between the two forms; there are two other bills

(both, curiously, to Scottish noblemen) in 1763 & 1764,

covering another 16 much less expensive beakers, but these

are all that one has encountered.

One is chary of introducing a tabulation into Limpid
Reflections, but perhaps a footnote summary of tumbler sales
from 1675 to 1820 may be excused, for it paints an interesting

picture which, despite the fact that one could go on for hours

about the detail and the underlying trends, I shall allow to

speak for itself.

Recorded sales of Tumblers, and their proportion of

total drinking Glass sales.

Period
Tumblers No.

and %
Average Price.

1675-99
62

6.3d

1700-24
0
0%

1725-49
22

3%
6.3d

1750-74
39
4%
9d

1775-99
206

22%
7.5d

1800-20
142
11%
23d

Lichecourt

.ViomEnil

Contrexeville

Monthure

a
Passavant

La Rochere

GLASS CIRCLE NEWS No. 107, 2006

TYZACKS OF LORRAINE

by Don Tyzack
A lecture given to the Glass Circle at The Art

Workers’ Guild on Tuesday 21st. March 2006.

The hosts for this meeting were Mrs E. Newgas,
Peter Lole, Tim Udall and Mr A.E. Bright.

It is a rare event for the Circle to be addressed by a

descendant of such a historically important glassmaking
family as the Tyzacks. Don, whose family built the first

glasshouse in Stourbridge, began by describing how he
returned to Darney, a small town with a glass museum near

Hennezel in the Voge mountains, the area occupied by his
ancestors. Here he was welcomed by the lady mayor with a
champagne reception. Such a welcome was, he said, “just

like returning home! … After all the Tyzacks had only left

in 1570 ! ! !”

From around 1400 the Hennezels, Thietries, Thysacs and

Bisvals had come there, probably from Bohemia, to make
broad window glass. The acorns of their coats of arms were

part of those of Darney (top right). A second group of

workers, Finance, du Houx, Massey, Bonay and Bigot made
bottles, goblets and other small items known as “menu

glass”. The glassmakers made their glass in remote wooded

areas and consequently had a secondary role as guards for
the Dukes of Lorraine. The large number of glassworks in

the region was remarkable – 44 for a population of around
only 600,000. Most of them remain unexplored so with the
mayor and museum director, and armed with a spade Don
was quickly able to uncover some crucible, pieces of kiln

and glass cullet in the corner of an orchard. These finds were
from the remains of La Batai I le glassworks.

In 1448 Duke Jean granted a new Charter for the

glassmakers by which they could build glass ovens, have
fishponds and hunt the deer and black bear in the

surrounding forest. They enjoyed the rights and privileges
of knights and other nobles in the Duchy of Lorraine. Most

of the Thysacs worked within an area of 10 miles around

Darney.

Don then described the process of pot making at the still
extant glassworks of La Rochere (13 Km from Darney)

built by Simon Thissac in 1496 (those who went on the

Glass Association trip to the Vosge will have been there

and seen the original huge old barn used for the furnace and

to store wood). An extract from the works rules says
“Avoid beating the tiseurs (who supervised the fires), but if

one is reduced to an undeniable extreme it will be necessary
to thrash them or put them on a diet of bread and water.. .”

An oven could work for 12 – 15 months known as “the

awakening”. When it was stopped for inspection this was
called “the death of the oven.” The use of sand and ash for

the batch was then described and the process of blowing,

splitting, flattening and annealing a muff to make broad

window glass.

The manufacture of broad glass was known only to the

above-mentioned families; their children who took it up
had to swear an oath of secrecy. However, Jean Thisac’s

sons, Robert and Francois subsequently left to discover the

art of making cristallo in Murano. Here Robert was

befriended by George Ballarin (related to the Barovier

family) where the brothers developed the production of
ruby widow glass. In so doing they betrayed their vows and

when Francois returned alone to the V8sge he was

ostracised for the betrayal by his family. However, he was
befriended by Duke Rene II and given a grant of land in

1505 to make cristallo. From this time cristallo was made in
Lorraine at La Frizon. Jean Thisac, the father, was also

given a site at Lichecourt by the Duke where he built a
furnace. His third son, Nicholas built the present
magnificent chateau there (picture below) in 1538. Relative

Christophe, during a feast day squabble, murdered his
cousin, Balthazar de Hennezel with his epée (which
everyone of note carried at that time). As a result he had to

flee to England. He was pardoned by Duke Charles II but
never returned. Christophe had a family in England and
died there in 1595. The names of these children and what

happened to them is not known.

Charles, another of the Thysac family built a glasshouse
called Belrupt, near Darney. He had to run away for killing

the local taxman! He was also pardoned and our speaker
was able to visit the derelict remains of his home. (No less
than eight other Thysacs had to seek remission for murder
and all received a pardon). Charles was buried in Catholic

Belrupt church. His son, Charles II left Lorraine in 1570,

probably due to the combined religious influence of Luther

and Calvin and to the pillaging of the Army of Philip II of
Spain. In England, under Mansell, the new broad glass

window industry brought over by the Tyzacks and Henzeys
flourished. The rest, as they say, is history.

Don’s family later abandoned glassmaking for toolmaking.

Don has published the family history in
Glass, Tools and

Tyzacks.

The 4th edition

of Don’s book is
now available in

full, free on his

website. *

Lichecourt

Chateau, 1538

GLASS CIRCLE NEWS No. 107, 2006

AROUND THE FAIRS
with HENRY FOX

Earlier this year I made my first visit to the Cambridge
Glass Fair. I was motivated to make this journey because I

wanted to see the special loan exhibition of Stuart 1930s
enamelled glassware ( for example see picture right). I was

singularly fortunate that a west country member friend was
visiting a former neighbour who lived now close to
Cambridge and so I was kindly given a lift to the Fair site,

which I must confess is not convenient unless you have
your own transport. Once there, I thoroughly enjoyed both

the exhibition element and the colourful stands weighed
down with a very wide choice of glassware, ranging from
C.18th through to contemporary studio pieces. There was a

good number of stands showing C.18th English drinking

glasses. I was particularly taken with a modern piece — a
full size trumpet. Needless to say dealers were taking

advantage of the interest shown in the special Stuart display

to have on offer pieces for sale on their stands. All in all – a
good day out.

My next visit was to the Woking Glass Fair in Surrey. This
did not have the buzz of Cambridge, but I saw several of

the same dealers, and again I can report a good selection of

mid to late C.18th drinking glasses.

It is always a pleasure to stroll down

Chelsea’s Kings Road, heading for the

BADA annual Fair. The general
development in this area is a great

improvement. Once in the grand marquee, I

soon found our dealer member Jeanette

Hayhurst showing selection of interesting

C.18th wine glasses, jellies etc. (see
picture right of an early mead glass) as well

as some later glassware. Just around a
corner I found another dealer member

Mark West. He, too, had C.18th glassware
and later colourful C.19th and C.20th
examples. Among Mark’s more unusual

items were several substantial pieces of Val
St. Lambert. Also, an interesting mirror

engraved with a quotation from the Koran

in Arabic, and a set of four glasses made
for Thos. Goode London 1935 which had
Picture

p
J. Ha hurst

globe-shaped hollow
stems containing lamp

work features depicting
fox hunting elements.

The bowls were
engraved within a horse

shoe with the words:
The

Hunting Season in The

Silver Jubilee Year of
1935.
Quality reigns at

this fair; I did not see
quite the variety of

candelabras, mirrors etc.
but I did find a few

reverse paintings on

glass.
This year has seen the re-launch of the LAPADA fair in a

London venue — Burlington Gardens at the rear of the

Royal Academy of Arts in Piccadilly. It was a warm
evening when I arrived early for the preview. Every effort
had been made to make this an important event. I was
pleased to see glass well-represented by exhibitors on either

side of the grand staircase. Our member, Christine Bridge
was on one side with some fine engraved glass and a

variety of Victorian decanters as well as examples of
C.18th English drinking glasses. She was complemented on

the other side by a dealer who specialises in Art Nouveau to
Art Deco glassware and art-work bronzes
covering the same period. There was an
impressive range of pieces by Galle, Daum.

Lalique, Argy-Rousseau and Walter to

mention but a few of the top glassmakers

from that period. Upstairs I found a silver

specialist who was showing a collection of

silver-mounted claret jugs. It was a busy
evening and getting overcrowded. When I

came to leave at around 8pm the queue
stretched along Burlington Gardens and the

side roads were grid locked with cars and
taxis. Personally, I enjoyed my visit but the

layout did not allow the huge numbers who
had turned up to move easily and coolly

around.

My next outing was closer to home: a large
marquee in the grounds of Losley House

Estate, Guildford. This property has been in

the same family for over four hundred
years. Here I found

another of our dealer

members, Brian Watson.

He had a selection of

mid-C.18th drinking

glasses as well as a
variety of early C.19th
rummers,

variously

engraved. This fair was

showing a mixture of

antiques and interior
decorator’s pieces, and

this arrangement proved

to work well, There was

a lot of interest and
money was changing

hands. This time out

Tennants

Christies

Sotheby’s, Amsterdam

Chri
sties

GLASS CIRCLE NEWS No. 107, 2006

everything was on the level and the passageways were
wide and general circulation around the stands was easy.
Several stands showed Victorian and Art Deco glass.

I did not get to the NEC, B’ham on this occasion, but
members may find of interest the picture (bottom of p. 16)

which another dealer member had in the catalogue.
Courtesy of Christopher Sheppard, this is an ensuite set
consisting of a decanter and eight double-knopped air-twist

glasses engraved with roses, two buds and moths for

Jacobite sympathy, of
circa

1750/1760.

. and AUCTIONS

*Sotheby’s Amsterdam- 21 & 22 February —
included in

this two day sale was a collection of birdcages which
included a rare and unusal glass birdcage, possibly Italian,

c.1850 (picture top right). Ht. 55cm. It is believed to have
been made for the Great exhibition of 1851. Estimated at

Euro 3,000-5000 it actually made Euro 900 as it was sold

without reserve.

*Tennants, Leyburn, N. Yorks — 12 April —
This Russian

cut glass and cloisonné enamel decorated inkwell made
£800 (picture right with apologies for the poor quality.)

*Christie’s South Kensington — 11 May — British And

Continental Glass and C.19th Ceramics –
this sale

included three Beilby enamelled glasses, all decorated with

fruiting vine: they made £2,000 wine; £1,000 wine
chipped foot; £4,500 firing glass. A pair of cut and
enamelled decanters and stoppers, perhaps by William

Collins
c.
1815 £1,400 (picture far right). They were

enamelled around the shoulders with Venus, cupids and
dolphins, the enamel rubbed in places. An attractive

Lobmeyr two handled Persian-style vase made £2,000

(picture right).

*Sotheby’s New Bond Street — 23 May — Ceramics and

Glass —
the highlight had to be the Ravenscroft posset but it

failed under the hammer, to be sold immediately

afterwards for £102,000. I did not attend this sale but got in

early on the previous Friday to view and it has it in my
hands for a few minutes. It was lighter than I anticipated

and for its age in superb condition. (picture bottom right)

The highest price of the
day was given for an

amazing pair of enamelled

and gilt Lobmeyr vases
decorated in the Persian

style. These went for a
world record price of
£144,000. That is at least

4 times the previous
highest price paid for a
piece of Lobmeyr glass

(picture of one, right).

I close with a mention of

some other very early
English lead crystal glass

that might have tempted

the more ordinary
collector with a deep
pocket. First there was a
For a very similar sealed ‘mystery posset pot in non-lead

glass, in the BM, donated by Albert Hartshorne, see the

article by Hugh Tait in GC News 71,1997, p. 4.

GLASS CIRCLE NEWS No. 107, 2006

Auctions concluded.
deep tazza, gadrooned round the base of the bowl on a hollow stem with folded foot. Dated to 1675-1680 it could have
been by Ravenscroft. It fetched £8,400. Next came an interesting jug on a hollow quatrefoil stem and domed folded foot.

This did not meet the reserve however. Finally there was a gadrooned mead glass with a coin in the hollow stem that sold
for £18,800.

However, my particular favourite was a pair of knopped air-twist baluster candlesticks of
c.

1725 that were

vigorously bid to a final price of £14,400. The beauty of early English glass still makes the heart miss a
beat. The pictures below say it all!

Double Glazing and Global Warming
The double glazing industry continues to do its bit to reduce global warming. Members will be familiar with the colour-

coded system used for rating the thermal efficiency of refrigerators. This has now been introduced for double glazing. Of

the three most efficient bands, coded green, band C is now the accepted target for new buyers. These windows use a glass
with low thermal transmittance combined with argon gas filling. Not all firms are yet able to supply them, however.

Band A efficiency, with essentially no heat loss, has hitherto related only to triple glazing but two firms in England now

offer double glazing with this rating. It involves glass with a special internal coating as well as gas filling. It may also

require special frames.

You may also be fascinated to know that British Arm Wrestling champion, and World number four, is a double glazing

salesman. (Glass & Glazing, March 2006).

co/oh/Will 21,0 rs

New Designers,
the foremost graduate showcase of Britain’s most talented

designers, celebrates 21 years of design excellence with two weeks of unrivalled

creativity — from 29 June to 2 July and 6 July to 9 July.

The unprecedented success of the exhibition is due to the continued high quality of
the young designers whose careers the show has launched. More than 4,000

graduate designers from 20 creative disciplines will display their skills to an
anticipated audience of over 14,000 design hungry consumers, collectors,

historians and traders.

The exhibition,
divided into two parts according to craft, is held at the
Business

Design Centre, 52 Upper Street, Islington, London N1.

Ticket Box Office:
Tel. 08701 295031

Part 1: June 29 to July 2
Ceramics and Glass Jewellery and Precious Metalwork, Fashion, Textiles and

Accessories.

Part 2: July 6 to July 9

Product Design, Furniture Design, Illustration and Animation, Graphic and

Interactive Media, Photography and Spacial Design (Architectural Design, Interior

Design, Model Making and Theatre Design).
Event website
www. newdesigners.com

Designers’ directory
www.newdesignersonline.co.uk

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Glass Circle News_No.107, Jun 2006

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