THE ENAMELLED GLASS OF THE SARACENS I have here to deal with a singularly restricted family of glass—that made in the Saracenic East during the thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth centuries. This enamelled glass is important for more than one reason. It is undoubtedly, as a group, the most magnificent and decorative that we meet with in the whole course of our history. Technically, again, the interest of the group is supreme, for this application of solid enamels, translucent or transparent, to the surface of glass, was a new departure, and it preceded, as far as we know, the use of any material of the kind in the decoration of porcelain and fayence. The Romans and the Byzantine Greeks, it is true, decorated their glass at times with thin washes of opaque paints, but we have no definite proof that they ever applied fusible lead enamels in this way. There is every reason to believe that this method of decoration was not in any general use in the East before the thirteenth century. But if we are still quite in the dark as to the origin of the art, it may be some consolation to remember that barely thirty years ago the few rare pieces of Saracenic glass that had reached us were classed as Venetian. It is only quite lately that this important ware has met with due recognition. No doubt much of the sculptured and engraved glass, that we have for convenience of arrangement dwelt upon in the last chapter, is of Saracenic origin; I do not, however, remember any instance of an Arabic inscription being found on such vessels, but on the deeply carved vases of rock crystal that seem to have formed the models that these engraved glasses closely followed, in more than one case tall cufic characters form part of the decoration. I will only point to the magnificent crystal vase which bears the name of an early Fatimi caliph (975-996 A.D.), preserved in the treasury of St. Mark’s.