. Glass. arvers and polishers of rock crystal were alreadyestablished as an important guild in Venice; they lookedupon the glass-workers as intruders. On the other hand,the efforts of the latter to imitate the nobler material hadno doubt an important bearing on the development ofVenetian glass, for it was as a consequence of theirsuccess in making an absolutely white transparent metalthat the Venetian glass-makers first acquired a Europeanfame. It was this cristallo di Venezia that revolutionisedat a later time the glass of Europe. At an early date, inspite of edicts forbidding its sale to the
. Glass. arvers and polishers of rock crystal were alreadyestablished as an important guild in Venice; they lookedupon the glass-workers as intruders. On the other hand,the efforts of the latter to imitate the nobler material hadno doubt an important bearing on the development ofVenetian glass, for it was as a consequence of theirsuccess in making an absolutely white transparent metalthat the Venetian glass-makers first acquired a Europeanfame. It was this cristallo di Venezia that revolutionisedat a later time the glass of Europe. At an early date, inspite of edicts forbidding its sale to the Todeschi, theunworked material, en masse, found its way into Ger-many, there to be worked up after remelting. Already inthe fourteenth century the water-power of Alpine streamshad been applied to the grinding and polishing of glass,as, for example, at Cortina dAmpezzo in the ItalianTyrol. The glass-makers at the same time, or a littlelater, came into competition with the carvers of jasper178 PLATE XXVIII. VENETIAN GLASS. THE ALDREVANDINI BEAKER CIRCA 1300, EARLY VENETIAN GLASS and agate, which stones they imitated by means ofingenious combinations of coloured glass [smalti). So far there is no evidence that the newly developedart of enamelling on glass had passed from the Syriancoast to the Lagoons. The Venetian glass-makerswere still working on other lines, and with other view, however, of the close commercial intercourseof the Venetians with the coast cities of Syria,^ we maywell imagine that some attempts were made to imitatethe brilliant enamels of the East. But the successfulhandling of these colours was not a matter to be easilylearned. There were as yet no handbooks to teach thecomposition of the coloured fluxes, to say nothing of thevarious devices and wrinkles to be mastered before theenamels could be successfully applied to the surface ofthe glass. In the Aldrevandini beaker in the BritishMuseum we may perhaps see an attempt to overcomethese difficulties
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