Of a later time than these South German examples of enamelled ware are the even more definite copies of the sixteenth-century glass of Venice that were made in the neighbourhood of Cologne. Here we have deliberate imitations of the Italian models—tall-stemmed glasses of thin _cristallo_ with wide-winged handles, the latter often of deep blue metal. There is a row of these _flügel-gläser_, as the Germans call them, arranged on an upper shelf in the British Museum; some of these may perhaps be referred to the glass-house at Dessau, where Italians were employed between 1679 and 1686, but as a whole such glasses must be of a somewhat earlier date than this. In any case, we must regard these _flügel-gläser_ as exotic growths, which lie quite apart from the two great German groups of the seventeenth century—I mean, of course, the enamelled and the engraved glass. In fact, the real influence of the new _cristallo_ of Venice was exerted in another direction. People who had seen this clear white glass were no longer content with the thick heavy metal of varying hues of green, blue, and yellow, often full of bubbles and defects. Already early in the sixteenth century in various parts of Germany attempts were made to introduce the Venetian methods of working, above all the Venetian materials. Now the Germans of that day were a practical people, already well ahead in many of the technical arts, above all in those relating to mining, to the smelting of metals, and to the _arts du feu_ generally. After a moment of hesitation, instead of merely copying the formulas that they learned from the Italians, they adapted them to the conditions of their own country, and thus were soon able, in the central mountain districts among a population of miners and woodmen, to establish a glass industry quite independent of foreign aid. In France, on the other hand, and still more in England, up to the end of the seventeenth century, whatever glass of artistic character was produced was made for the most part by foreign workmen, and to some extent with foreign materials. Perhaps the most striking instance of the independent line taken by the German glass-workers may be found in the continued use of potash made from the beechwoods of their forests, and with this alkali they were soon able to produce a glass as brilliant and colourless as the soda-made _cristallo_ of the south. So far we have only got to the fringe of our subject; for the green glass of the Rhine and Holland can in no way be regarded as characteristic of German glass as a whole. Such glass I would rather class as Lotharingian, using that term for that central land that is neither French nor quite German. In so doing I am of course treading on delicate ground; but I am prepared to maintain that it is rather in a heavily enamelled _willkomm-humpen_ of plain cylindrical form from Saxony or Franconia than in a prunted _roemer_ of green glass that we have a really characteristic type of the glass of Germany.