_Todeschi_, the unworked material, _en masse_, found its way into Germany, there to be worked up after remelting. Already in the fourteenth century the water-power of Alpine streams had been applied to the grinding and polishing of glass, as, for example, at Cortina d’Ampezzo in the Italian Tyrol. The glass-makers at the same time, or a little later, came into competition with the carvers of jasper and agate, which stones they imitated by means of ingenious combinations of coloured glass (_smalti_). [Illustration: _PLATE XXVIII_ VENETIAN GLASS. THE ALDREVANDINI BEAKER CIRCA 1300, A.D.] So far there is no evidence that the newly developed art of enamelling on glass had passed from the Syrian coast to the Lagoons. The Venetian glass-makers were still working on other lines, and with other aims. In view, however, of the close commercial intercourse of the Venetians with the coast cities of Syria,[131] we may well imagine that some attempts were made to imitate the brilliant enamels of the East. But the successful handling of these colours was not a matter to be easily learned. There were as yet no handbooks to teach the composition of the coloured fluxes, to say nothing of the various devices and ‘wrinkles’ to be mastered before the enamels could be successfully applied to the surface of the glass. In the Aldrevandini beaker in the British Museum we may perhaps see an attempt to overcome these difficulties. The ‘metal’ itself is here quite of a Venetian type, thin and absolutely white, although disfigured by the black specks so characteristic of early Venetian glass. There is no trace of Oriental influence in the decoration; the three heater-shaped shields have charges—keys, antlers, and fesses—that have been traced back to certain Swabian towns, but the inscription in Gothic letters—✠ MAGISTER ALDREVANDIN’ ME FECI—points to a Venetian origin. On the ground of the heraldry and of the inscription, a date of about the year 1300 may be ascribed to this goblet. The enamels, it should be noted, are of the poorest description; all the well-known Saracenic colours are imitated, it is true, but with a striking want of success.