Throughout the Middle Ages, public opinion considered the many-colored glass of Roman or Byzantine or Islamic origin, like precious stones and stored as such.
So it was considered the hemispherical blue Roman cup, known as "owned by the Queen Teodolinda", in the Treasury of the cathedral of Monza in Italy, which for a long time was thought to be cut by a colossal sapphire, as well as the green glass plate in the Abbey of Reichenau on Lake of Constance, called "the emerald of Charlemagne", because according to tradition, it was given to the sovereign by the Byzantine Empress Irene.
Most famous of all, the hexagonal green emerald cup with internal recess decorations, called the "Holy Basin" taken by the Genoese in 1101 during the sack of Caesarea and still preserved in the Treasury of San Lorenzo in Genoa.
This cup was believed in the past made from pure emerald and was in turn identified with the Holy Grail, or a gift of Solomon King to the Queen of Sheba, or the cup of which, after the torture, the head of St. John the Baptist was placed. Instead, it is probably a medieval Egyptian work, as no doubt is the plate of green emerald mentioned above. The emerald green glass that was made in Alexandria and Fostat (old Cairo) was well-known in the Middle Ages.
We will find in the following centuries among the Murano glass makers, the same passion for the counterfeiting of gems that we have seen in the Roman and Islamic world. The vibrant research of complex mixtures of colors to get the tonality and shades very similar to those of the gems, especially in ruby-red, emerald green and in the blue sapphire passionate since the nineties, constantly and proudly, the best bead makers in their realization of glass beads for Pandora, which recently have been able to even include semi-precious stones like cubic zirconia into the molten glass.
But in these centuries the art of glassmaking had a new miraculous rebirth in the Islamic East, whose influence was heard first in the Byzantine Empire and then in Venice.
To this revival that lasted from the eighth to the fourteenth century competed all major Muslim countries: Egypt, Iraq, Persia and Syria, with stylistic characteristics, at least until the year one thousand, almost identical, given the real artistic and cultural unity form which arose with Islam in its early centuries of life, as could you prove the impressive series of discoveries made in 1912-1914 by a German archaeological expedition in Samarra (Iraq), the famous city on the Tigris built-in 840 by the Caliph Billah Motasemm, where the Abbasids Caliphs lived until 970.
The Islamic glass from this period include different types and techniques: glass mosaic similar to Alexandrian "Murrini", but different from those for a typical dull yellow color, with motifs of eyes formed by dotted circles, probably carried by Egyptian artisans moved to the capital of Mesopotamia and used as wall decorations.
Small cups and bowls in transparent yellow glass, or dark green and amethyst, also of Egyptian production of the VIII-X centuries, mold decorated with isolated or grouped dots in clusters, and sometimes stylized animals, enclosed in medallions, worked with the pliers (these glasses remind to small medallions in molded glass, used by late Roman times onwards as measures of weight or capacity).
Large bowls and cups, and more rarely mugs and jugs in dark green or amber, with Kufic inscriptions or decorations, even with pliers, in linear shapes, geometric (knots and rosettes), and sometimes zoomorphic, probably made in Egypt between the tenth and the eleventh century; even small vials and perfume bottles, in blue or green glass, often with the neck almost cylindrical, sometimes decorated to the wheel, of Egyptian origin from the centuries IX and X.
Beautifully carved bowls and plates through a blue or green surface layer, with drawings of animals and arabesques, in patterns evidently derived from similar contemporary works in Islamic rock crystal, which suggests that these objects, all assigned to the ninth and tenth centuries, they have been produced by craftsmen close to those of Iraq and Egypt and in medieval times they had a reputation for very talented engravers of precious stones.
Some of these items show the particularity to present the detected decorations, obtained by lowering the bottom, such as cameos. The result is the most dazzling. Later a subspecies of this type to which it belongs among others, a beautiful bulb decorated with rams, kept in the Treasury of San Marco, consists of a series of glasses likely coming from Egypt in the form of calyx, decorated mostly with animals (lions, eagles, griffins) engraved in bas-relief, which in medieval Europe were used as reliquaries and are now stored in the Treasures of the cathedrals of some cities in Germany and Poland (the so-called glassware of St. Hedwig).
Is highly controversial the source of some glass items of the treasures in the cathedral of Halberstadt in Saxony and in the Basilica of San Marco in Venice, in the form of plates or scales of circular pans, mounted in the guise of hanging lamps, decorated with concentric circles in relief or circular concave and shallow facets. Some are reproductions in glass of silver lamps described by Paul Silenziario, originally existing in the Hagia Sophia in Constantinople and so the Byzantine manufacturing; according to others they should be attributed to Persian art of the Sassanid period.
Again in the Treasury of San Marco also are included two cups, respectively in turquoise and emerald green glass, with carved reliefs of crudely stylized hares, the second of which recalls the vials of perfume and the Holy Basin of which has been discussed above, and would be Egyptian, while the former, although bears engraved the words "Khorasan", it is not necessarily have to be Persian, partly because we know that it was offered as a gift to the Signoria from Agi Mohammed, legate of the Shah of Persia Uzunhassan in 1472, as authentic turquoise stone of the region, so the inscription might have had fraudulent intent.
Poor implementation was rather in the Islamic world the engraving by diamond tip, at least judging from the few pieces processed in this way and found in Samarra and Egypt.
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STRAVAGANTE Glass Jewelry Company is the only Italian producer of glass beads for Pandora. We are producers of quality and artistic handmade glass jewelry in about 10 glass laboratories based in North Italy.
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