Up: Glassmaking
Reminiscences 38 of 123
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permitted to take a mould from the vase, at a cost of twenty-five hundred
dollars, and he disposed of many copies, in his rich china, at a price of
two hundred and fifty dollars each.
The next specimen of importance is the vase exhumed
at Pompeii in 1839, which is now at the Museum at Naples.
It is about twelve inches high, eight inches in width, and of the same
style of manufacture with the "Portland Vase." It is covered with
figures in bas-relief raised out of a delicate white opaque glass,
overlaying a transparent dark blue ground, the figures being executed
in the style of cameo engraving. To effect this, the manufacturer must
have possessed the art of coating a body of transparent blue glass with
an equal thickness of enamel or opal-colored glass. The difficulty of
tempering the two bodies of glass with different specific gravities,
in order that they may stand the work of the sculptor, is well known by
modern glass-makers. This specimen is considered by some to be the work
of Roman artists; by others it is thought to be of the Grecian school.
As a work of art it ranks next to the "Portland Vase," and the figures and
foliage, all elegant and expressive, and representative of the season of
harvest, demonstrate most fully the great artistic merit of the designer.
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