Encycl. Les verres églomisés sont ces petits tableaux dont le
sujet est peint sur le verre même qui les recouvre. On fait un
fréquent usage de ses petits panneaux ou de ces lentilles pour
former des dessus de bonbonnières, etc. Ordinairement, le tracé
est fait à la pointe, sur une feuille d’or fixée au vernis
sur le verre. Le mot “églomisé” a été inventé, en 1825, par
l’archéologue Carrand et appliqué par lui aussi bien aux verres
modernes décorés suivant la méthode de Glomi qu’aux objets
beaucoup plus anciens, datant du plus haut moyen âge, où la
feuille d’or est soudée au feu entre deux pellicules de verre.
The work was done on one glass, and another was made to literally
enclose the finely etched gold lines, so that no harm could come to the
decoration. Delicate landscapes as well as figures and portrait busts are
done, and the glass is found coloured as well as clear white. There is
a fine example in the Imperial Austrian Museum at Vienna, in which the
silhouette in gold of a man appears with the inscription, “P. Ferdinand
Karl, Professi Hilariensis. Mildner fec. à Gullenbrunn, 1799.”
In the Glass Gallery at the Victoria and Albert Museum, and at the
British Museum, there are very fine specimens. At the former there is
a drinking glass specially worthy of note. It is of tumbler shape, 3½
inches by 2¾ inches, and is formed of two layers of glass, one of which
is etched in gold leaf, with a group of St. George and the Dragon,
foliated scrolls, festoons, and arabesques. The bottom is coloured red
and etched in gold, with the sacred monogram I.H.S., and the legend,
“Benedictine sit nomen Domini.” The outside is cut in facets. This
example is German early eighteenth century.
Wonderfully vivid hunting scenes are shown in gold-silhouette on an
example of sixteenth-century work owned by Mr. FitzHenry; while black
silhouette work of Nuremberg manufacture is painted in black with flowers
and sacred emblems. Besides the gold ornamented glass, there was also a
good deal made in the same way but decorated in very dark brown or black.
Hunting scenes, elaborately sketched with the minutest detail in tree,
hound, and huntsman, often figure on such pieces.
A volume on the silhouette in all its aspects would be incomplete without
some reference to the use which, from earliest times, has been made of
shadowgraphy to represent isolated scenes, and also complete plays on the
stage.
In Paris, in 1771, the celebrated Theatre Seraphin was founded by
Seraphin Dominique François, who opened his little theatre for
shadowgraphy alone, in the gardens at Versailles.
Slight and dainty were the plays, and we can imagine the silk-clad
audience in powder and patches who would come with the children, or
with no excuse at all, to amuse themselves at the antics performed in
this shadowland. Little they cared for the real shadows of the terrible
Revolution which were already gathering as they applauded the silhouettes
of Seraphin.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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