GUDENRATH, William

JGS 48

The Corning Museum of Glass, Corning, 2006, p. 23-70

British Museum (LondresLondon) ; Calouste Gulbenkian Museum (LisbonneLisbon) ; Collezioni Egittologische, Università di Pisa (PisePisa) ; The Corning Museum of Glass (Corning) ; The Hermitage Museum (St. Petersburg) ; Hessisches Landesmuseum (Kassel) ; Kuwait National Museum (KuweitKuwait) ; Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York) ; Museo Civico e Archeologico (Locarno) ; Museum für Kunsthandwerk (Francfort-sur-le-MainFrankfurt am Main) ; The J. Paul Getty Museum (Los Angeles) ; Treasury of San Marco (VeniseVenice) ; Victoria and Albert Museum (LondresLondon)

sans contexte archéologique without archaeological context

[-1425, 1800]

amphoriscos amphoriscos assiette plate bol bowl bouteille bottle cruche ewer gobelet beaker lampe lamp vase vase verre à boire drinking glass

gold sandwich glass" "gold sandwich glass" doré gilded émaillé enamelled

• Definition of enamel decoration:
coloured glass (or a mixture of colourless glass and a colouring agent - pigment) that is pulverized and painted, in the form of fine granules suspended in a liquid. Applied onto a cooled glass vessel, then permanently fused to its surface by intense heating.

• Types of enamel:
– how and when the enamels get their colour:
premelted (or prefritted) enamel,
cold-mixed (or unfritted) enamel.

– enemal preparation - firing temperature:
- low-fire enamels;
- high-fire enamels – the only enamels available for decorating glass until the 19th century.

– firing processes:
- klin fring;
- furnace firing - until the 19th century, a glassworker’s only option for firing enemals on glass:
graduaty preheating in the klin (c. 510° C),
heating in the glass furnace (c. 1093° C),
annealing.

• Chronological survey:

– Egypt, Pharaonic Period: 15th century A.D.:
- jug decorated with yellow and white enamels (fig. 1). Premelted enamel. Up-to-now - a unique exemple of an enamelled glass that predates the Roman Period.

– Roman Glass (1st-4th centuries):
- cup found in Locarno (A.D. 20-70) (fig. 3). Premelted enamel. The procedure of alternately reheating the decorated blank in the furnace and cooling it outside the furnace was repeated several times.
- amforiscos from Kerch (1st century A.D.) (fig. 5). Premelted enamel.
- the Daphne Ewer (late 2nd - early 3rd century A.D.) (fig. 6). Premelted enamel, enamelled and gilded.
- flute from Sedeinga (3rd century A.D.) (fig. 7). Some of the painted decoration is fired enamel while the rest is cold-painted; added gold-foil decoration.
- bottle with Apollo and Marsays (3rd-4th century A.D.) (fig. 8). Enamelled and gilded.

– Byzantine Glass (10th-11th centuries):
- about a 600 year hiatus between late Roman and Byzantine enameled glass. Example : bowl from the Treasury of San Marco (10th or 11th century) (fig. 9): enamelling, gold-painting, silver staining.

– Islamic Glass (9th-14th centuries):
9th-10th centuries:
- gold sandwich glass vessels, some of them with blue enemel dots sandwiched between two fused layers of glass (example: bottle from the British Museum - fig. 10).
late 12th -14th centuries:
- enemeling and gilding glass: question on the origin of enamelling in the Islamic world: transfer of information from Byzantine workshops or re-invention of this technique (in Syria ?). Examples: beaker from Lisbon (late 13th century) (fig. 11), beaker from Kassel (second half of the 13th century) (fig. 12), fragments of beaker from Kuwait (fig. 13), mosque lamp from Lisbon (fig. 14).

– European Glass (13th - 19th centuries):
- Venetian glass: question on the origin - medieval Islamic or Byzantine techniques.
13th - 14th centuries: group of the “Aldrevandin” beakers (late 13th century) - example: fig. 15 and 16: enamelled decoration applied to both the outer and inner surface.
15th - 17th centuries: author’s theory about the ceasing of enamel glass production in Venice between early 14th century and the 15th century. Development of the production and technology in the 15th century: leaving the blanks in an unfinished form, decorating them, and then resuming and completing their shaping after their initial firing.
Examples: nuptial goblet in the Corning Museum (fig. 26) - enamelled and gold-leaf decoration; ewer in the Getty Museum (fig. 29) - enamelled and gold-leaf decoration.
- The Low Countries (16th century): examples of the enamelled and gold sandwich glass : tazza in the British Museum (fig. 30) and Margaret of Austria rounel (fig. 31).
- Spain and France (16th century): the same technology as that used in Venice. Examples: goblet (fig. 32) and two drinking glasses (fig. 33) in the Corning Museum of Glass: enamelled and gold-leaf decoration.
- Germany (16th and 17th century): examples: “Humpen” drinking glasses (fig. 34) - enamelled and gold-leaf decoration; beaker in the Corning Museum (fig. 35): “filigrana”, enamelled and gold-leaf decoration; two beakers with opaque white and black enamels (fig. 36); group of vessels decorated with “Schwarzlot” (fig. 37): lightly painted enamel, usually black, gray or rust red.
- Venice and England (18th century): opaque white glass decorated with polychrome enamels, made in imitiaion of Chinese porcelain (fig. 39 and 40); transparent lead glass decorated with enamels and gold leaf (fig. 41).

– Europe (19th century): a great advance - development of low-fire enamels.

Allemagne Germany			production
Angleterre England			production
Bohême Bohemia			production
Byzance Byzantium			production
Egypte Egypt			production
Espagne Spain			production
France France			production
Hollande Holland			production
Italie Italy		Venise Venice	production
Syrie Syria			production