Part 3 (2/2)

Secondly, the great difference between coloured gla.s.s and painted gla.s.s must be kept in view. A coloured gla.s.s window is in the nature of a mosaic. Not only are no large pieces of gla.s.s used, but each piece is separated from and at the same time joined to its neighbour by a thin grooved strip of lead which holds the two. ”_Coloured gla.s.s_ is obtained by a mixture of metallic oxides whilst in a state of fusion. This colouring pervades the substance of the gla.s.s and becomes incorporated with it.”[1] It is termed ”pot-metal.” An examination of such a piece of gla.s.s will show it to be full of varieties of a given colour, uneven in thickness, full of little air-bubbles and other accidents which cause the rays of light to play in and through it with endless variety of effect. It is the exact opposite to the clear sheet of ordinary window-gla.s.s.

To build up a decorative work (and such a form of expression may be found very appropriate in this craft) in coloured gla.s.s, the pieces must be carefully selected, the gradations of tint in a given piece being made use of to gain the result aimed at. The leaded ”canes” by which the whole is held together are made use of to aid the effect. Fine lines and hatchings are painted as with ”silver stain,” and in this respect only is there any approach to enamelling in the making of a coloured gla.s.s window. The gla.s.s mosaic as above described is held in its place in the window by horizontal iron bars, and the position of these is a matter of some importance, and is by no means overlooked by the artist in considering the effect of his finished work. A well-designed coloured gla.s.s window is, in fact, like nothing else in the world but itself. It is not only a mosaic; it is not merely a picture. It is the honest outcome of the use of gla.s.s for making a beautiful window which shall transmit light and not look like anything but what it is. The effect of the work is obtained by the contrast of the rich colours of the pot-metal with the pearly tones of the clear gla.s.s.

We must now describe a _painted_ window, so that the distinction between a coloured and a painted window may be clearly made out. Quoting from the same book as before--”To paint gla.s.s the artist uses a plate of translucent gla.s.s, and applies the design and colouring with vitrifiable colours. These colours, true enamels, are the product of metallic oxides combined with vitreous compounds called fluxes. Through the medium of these, a.s.sisted by a strong heat, the colouring matters are fixed upon the plate of gla.s.s.” In the painted window we are invited to forget that gla.s.s is being used. Shadows are obtained by loading the surface with enamel colours; the fullest rotundity of modelling is aimed at; the lead and iron so essentially necessary to the construction and safety of the window are concealed with extraordinary skill and ingenuity. The spectator perceives a hole in the wall with a very indifferent picture in it--overdone in the high lights, smoky and unpleasant in the shadows, in no sense decorative. We need concern ourselves no more with painted windows; they are thoroughly false and unworthy of consideration.

Of coloured or stained windows, as they are more commonly called, many are made, mostly bad, but there are amongst us a few who know how to make them well, and these are better than any made elsewhere in Europe at this time.

SOMERS CLARKE.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] _Industrial Arts_, ”Historical Sketches,” p. 195, published for the Committee of Council on Education. Chapman and Hall.

TABLE GLa.s.s

Few materials lend themselves more readily to the skill of the craftsman than gla.s.s. The fluid or viscous condition of the ”metal” as it comes from the ”pot,” the way in which it is shaped by the breath of the craftsman, and by his skill in making use of centrifugal force, these and many other things too numerous to mention are all manifested in the triumphs of the Venetian gla.s.s-blower. At the first glance we see that the vessel he has made is of a material once liquid. He takes the fullest advantage of the conditions under which he works, and the result is a beautiful thing which can be produced in but one way.

For many centuries the old methods were followed, but with the power to produce the ”metal,” or gla.s.s of extreme purity and transparency, came the desire to leave the old paths, and produce work in imitation of crystal. The wheel came into play, and cut and engraved gla.s.s became general. At first there was nothing but a genuine advance or variation on the old modes.

The specimens of clear gla.s.s made at the end of the seventeenth and beginning of the eighteenth centuries are well designed to suit the capabilities of the material. The form given to the liquid metal by the craftsman's skill is still manifest, its delicate transparency accentuated here and there by cutting the surface into small facets, or engraving upon it graceful designs; but as skill increased so taste degraded. The graceful outlines and natural curves of the old workers gave place to distortions of line but too common in all decorative works of the period. A little later and the material was produced in mere lumps, cut and tormented into a thousand surfaces, suggesting that the work was made from the solid, as, in part, it was. This miserable stuff reached its climax in the early years of the present reign.

Since then a great reaction has taken place. For example, the old decanter, a ma.s.sive lump of misshapen material better suited to the purpose of braining a burglar than decorating a table, has given place to a light and gracefully formed vessel, covered in many cases with well-designed surface engraving, and thoroughly suited both to the uses it is intended to fulfil and the material of which it is made. And not only so, but a distinct variation and development upon the old types has been made. The works produced have not been merely copies, but they have their own character. It is not necessary to describe the craft of the gla.s.s-blower. It is sufficient to say that he deals with a material which, when it comes to his hands, is a liquid, solidifying rapidly on exposure to the air; that there is hardly a limit to the delicacy of the film that can be made; and, in addition to using a material of one colour, different colours can be laid one over the other, the outer ones being afterwards cut through by the wheel, leaving a pattern in one colour on a ground of another.

There has developed itself of late an unfortunate tendency to stray from the path of improvement,[1] but a due consideration on the part both of the purchaser and of the craftsman of how the material should be used will result, it may be hoped, in farther advances on the right road.

SOMERS CLARKE.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] Novelty rather than improvement is the rock on which our craftsmen are but too often wrecked.

PRINTING

Printing, in the only sense with which we are at present concerned, differs from most if not from all the arts and crafts represented in the Exhibition in being comparatively modern. For although the Chinese took impressions from wood blocks engraved in relief for centuries before the wood-cutters of the Netherlands, by a similar process, produced the block books, which were the immediate predecessors of the true printed book, the invention of movable metal letters in the middle of the fifteenth century may justly be considered as the invention of the art of printing. And it is worth mention in pa.s.sing that, as an example of fine typography, the earliest book printed with movable types, the Gutenberg, or ”forty-two line Bible” of about 1455, has never been surpa.s.sed.

Printing, then, for our purpose, may be considered as the art of making books by means of movable types. Now, as all books not primarily intended as picture-books consist princ.i.p.ally of types composed to form letterpress, it is of the first importance that the letter used should be fine in form; especially as no more time is occupied, or cost incurred, in casting, setting, or printing beautiful letters than in the same operations with ugly ones. And it was a matter of course that in the Middle Ages, when the craftsmen took care that beautiful form should always be a part of their productions whatever they were, the forms of printed letters should be beautiful, and that their arrangement on the page should be reasonable and a help to the shapeliness of the letters themselves. The Middle Ages brought caligraphy to perfection, and it was natural therefore that the forms of printed letters should follow more or less closely those of the written character, and they followed them very closely. The first books were printed in black letter, _i.e._ the letter which was a Gothic development of the ancient Roman character, and which developed more completely and satisfactorily on the side of the ”lower-case” than the capital letters; the ”lower-case” being in fact invented in the _early_ Middle Ages. The earliest book printed with movable type, the aforesaid Gutenberg Bible, is printed in letters which are an exact imitation of the more formal ecclesiastical writing which obtained at that time; this has since been called ”missal type,” and was in fact the kind of letter used in the many splendid missals, psalters, etc., produced by printing in the fifteenth century. But the first Bible actually dated (which also was printed at Maintz by Peter Schoeffer in the year 1462) imitates a much freer hand, simpler, rounder, and less _spiky_, and therefore far pleasanter and easier to read. On the whole the type of this book may be considered the _ne-plus-ultra_ of Gothic type, especially as regards the lower-case letters; and type very similar was used during the next fifteen or twenty years not only by Schoeffer, but by printers in Strasburg, Basle, Paris, Lubeck, and other cities. But though on the whole, except in Italy, Gothic letter was most often used, a very few years saw the birth of Roman character not only in Italy, but in Germany and France. In 1465 Sweynheim and Pannartz began printing in the monastery of Subiaco near Rome, and used an exceedingly beautiful type, which is indeed to look at a transition between Gothic and Roman, but which must certainly have come from the study of the twelfth or even the eleventh century MSS. They printed very few books in this type, three only; but in their very first books in Rome, beginning with the year 1468, they discarded this for a more completely Roman and far less beautiful letter. But about the same year Mentelin at Strasburg began to print in a type which is distinctly Roman; and the next year Gunther Zeiner at Augsburg followed suit; while in 1470 at Paris Udalric Gering and his a.s.sociates turned out the first books printed in France, also in Roman character. The Roman type of all these printers is similar in character, and is very simple and legible, and unaffectedly designed for _use_; but it is by no means without beauty. It must be said that it is in no way like the transition type of Subiaco, and though more Roman than that, yet scarcely more like the complete Roman type of the earliest printers of Rome.

A further development of the Roman letter took place at Venice. John of Spires and his brother Vindelin, followed by Nicholas Jenson, began to print in that city, 1469, 1470; their type is on the lines of the German and French rather than of the Roman printers. Of Jenson it must be said that he carried the development of Roman type as far as it can go: his letter is admirably clear and regular, but at least as beautiful as any other Roman type. After his death in the ”fourteen eighties,” or at least by 1490, printing in Venice had declined very much; and though the famous family of Aldus restored its technical excellence, rejecting battered letters, and paying great attention to the ”press work” or actual process of _printing_, yet their type is artistically on a much lower level than Jenson's, and in fact they must be considered to have ended the age of fine printing in Italy.

Jenson, however, had many contemporaries who used beautiful type, some of which--as, _e.g._, that of Jacobus Rubeus or Jacques le Rouge--is scarcely distinguishable from his. It was these great Venetian printers, together with their brethren of Rome, Milan, Parma, and one or two other cities, who produced the splendid editions of the Cla.s.sics, which are one of the great glories of the printer's art, and are worthy representatives of the eager enthusiasm for the revived learning of that epoch. By far the greater part of these _Italian_ printers, it should be mentioned, were Germans or Frenchmen, working under the influence of Italian opinion and aims.

It must be understood that through the whole of the fifteenth and the first quarter of the sixteenth centuries the Roman letter was used side by side with the Gothic. Even in Italy most of the theological and law books were printed in Gothic letter, which was generally more formally Gothic than the printing of the German workmen, many of whose types, indeed, like that of the Subiaco works, are of a transitional character.

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