Beginning in the 13th century, the philosophies, scientific discoveries, and artistic achievements of East Asia gradually became known in Europe. The Chinese began large-scale international trade during the Southern Song dynasty (1127–1279), exchanging goods with Western merchant travelers.¹ The best-recorded of these travelers was Marco Polo (1254–1324), who left Venice for Asia Minor in 1271, and his journey and adventures were reported and romanticized following his return to Italy 24 years later.² This era was marked by the extension of the Silk Road to Italy and by the beginning of the importation of Eastern goods, such as Turkish textiles and Chinese ceramics, into Europe, where they were treasured.³ In 16th-century Florence, Grand Duke Ferdinando I de’ Medici (1549–1609) became an enthusiastic collector of Chinese porcelain. Through his generosity and diplomatic gifts, such exotica reached other European courts, notably that of Elector Christian I of Saxony (1560–1591) in 1590.⁴ During the following centuries, these objects stimulated scientific experiments and a widespread fascination with imitation.⁵

This article examines some of the parallels in the making of early European porcelain and glass, as the desire to imitate Asian porcelain in the West led scientists to experimentation in both clay and glass. The technological advances that resulted from these efforts include the discovery of kaolin and its successful conversion, in Dresden in 1708, into hard-paste porcelain like that of Asia. Throughout the 18th century, ceramists and glassworkers continued to fashion sought-after objects that were inspired, both in style and in decoration, by Asian and other European wares. By studying various centers of production in western Europe and East Asia, this article analyzes influences and the resulting progress in glass technology and decoration.⁶

Early European experiments in the making of porcelain were strongly tied to glassmaking, based on the longstanding misconception that Chinese hard-paste porcelain was a completely vitreous rather than clay-based material. Glasshouses in Venice (about 1500), Nevers (about 1675), Munich (about 1680), and Dresden (about 1700) made white glass by adding bone ash or chalk, whereas early European ceramists, such as those in the Florentine workshop of Francesco I de’ Medici (1541–1587) after 1575, and potters in Rouen and Saint-Cloud before 1673 and 1683 respectively (when they first made soft-paste porcelain) produced earthenware that was typically coated with a tin-opacified glaze so as to more closely resemble Asian wares.⁷ True hard-paste porcelain, however, was first fired in Europe during experiments in Dresden by Ehrenfried Walther von Tschirnhaus (1651–1708) and Johann Friedrich Böttger (1682–1719) in 1708. Their success led to the establishment of the porcelain manufactory in Meissen, near Dresden, in 1710.⁸ As Ulrich Pietsch notes, it seems plausible that Tschirnhaus learned of the fine white clay used for the production of porcelain in China by reading the accounts of Marco Polo, Gaspar da Cruz (active in 1569), Matthäus Dresser (1536–1607), or Jan Nieuhof (1618–1672), each of whom described the addition of “a certain sort of soil” to the batch.⁹ Consequently, Tschirnhaus and his colleague Böttger are credited with having been the first to employ the necessary kaolin, and it was Böttger who presented to Augustus the Strong (1670–1733), elector of Saxony and king of Poland, the first successful samples of European hard-paste porcelain.¹⁰

Tschirnhaus’s research on the composition of porcelain was conducted at several glasshouses. His principal manufactory, the Königlich-Polnische Kurfürstlich Sächsische Glasfabrique (1699–1760), afforded him the opportunity to test different clays, but it was also engaged in the making of glass, most of it colorless but some of it in opaque colors.¹¹ Opaque glass had become popular in Venice during the Renaissance, when calcedonio imitated hard stone, and white as well as translucent green and blue glass were used to make richly enameled vessels in which the painted and occasionally gilded inscriptions and other decoration were visually separated from the colored ground (Fig. 1). Other, undecorated lattimo objects, as alternatives to cristallo, were not made as imitations of porcelain, and their forms are not found in ceramic production (Fig. 2).¹²

The making of glass and porcelain at the same furnaces, which originated with Tschirnhaus, utilized not only the same equipment but probably also some of the same craftsmen. Dedo von Kerssenbrock-Krosigk has tentatively attributed a small milk glass bottle (Fig. 3) to a workshop near Böttger’s in Dresden, noting that the style and decorative technique of that object resembled those of the finely cut opaque Böttgerware vessels produced at Meissen in the 1710s.¹³ According to Gisela Haase, opaque colored table wares by the Sachsische Glasfabrique displayed at the Leipzig trade fair in 1713 offered stiff competition for the Meissen Steinzeug that had been recently introduced by Böttger.¹⁴ These competing enterprises operated in close proximity and presumably engaged several of the same cutters and engravers.¹⁵ Although Meissen’s early production imitated Chinese porcelain in both material and style, the Dresden bottle imitated only the material, for it employed local wheelcutting techniques and a highly fashionable French ornamentation in the form of an engraved arabesque design devised by Jean Bérain the Elder (1638–1711).¹⁶

With the spread of alchemical knowledge from Saxony to neighboring states and beyond, an interest in porcelain and glass made in imitation of porcelain swept the Continent. One Meissen arcanist and enameler, Christoph Conrad Hunger (active from before 1717 to about 1748), had left Saxony for Vienna, where he was employed by Claudius Innocentius Du Paquier (d. 1751) in 1717. Together with Böttger’s kiln master Samuel Stöltzel (d. 1737), Hunger successfully made hard-paste porcelain there in 1719.¹⁷ While the Du Paquier manufactory flourished from 1719 to 1740—rivaling Meissen and, notably, preceding the French Vincennes and Sèvres factories—Hunger left Vienna in 1720 to work with the Vezzi brothers in Venice.¹⁸ The Vezzis, who were established glassmakers, became famous for their porcelain making, albeit briefly. Their success in porcelain may have influenced their later glass wares, resulting in finely made table wares (Figs. 4 and 5).¹⁹ Their production was rivaled by that of the neighboring Miotti glasshouse, which excelled in the making of white enameled vessels and plates that resemble both porcelain (Fig. 6) and faience (Fig. 7).²⁰

From Venice, the secrets of glassmaking were carried north.²¹ Although this is well known and much studied in connection with the stylistic and technical properties of cristallo and an international fascination with imitating this type of glass, the production in Switzerland of milk glass resembling porcelain by glassmakers of Venetian origin and training is less established.²² Archaeological excavations around the former Südel glasshouse in Flühli, near Lucerne, unearthed fragments of a porcelainlike lattimo of sophisticated craftsmanship and decorated with a feather design that are datable to about 1723 to 1760. They facilitate the attribution of intact objects in this style (Figs. 8 and 9).²³ This form of decoration may be unique to glasshouses in Flühli, but figural motifs, such as those that are generally affiliated with decorative styles in Bohemia, characterize a second group of Südel glasses.²⁴ Interestingly, this glass is comparatively translucent and so reminiscent both of Chinese porcelain and of its imitations, such as Bohemian milk glass. Thus the Swiss production appears to reflect geographically divergent influences, including Venetian technical skill, a particular batch formula, and figural iconography related to northern traditions.²⁵

In Bohemia (present-day Czech Republic), where colorless glass was blown, cut, and engraved— an industry that earned the northwestern region of that country a large share of the market and a reputation for quality craftsmanship— opaque white and enameled table wares were also produced, as exemplified by certain objects made in the 1780s that are attributed to the Harrach Glassworks.²⁶ A covered box (Fig. 10) and urn (Fig. 11) are examples of such manufacture, and if they are less refined than their counterparts in clay, they nevertheless attest to the parallel interest in glass. A tray (Fig. 12) and a teacup (Fig. 13) display the same qualities, and the style of their polychrome decoration reflects local influences, such as that of Meissen porcelain, in both glass and porcelain.²⁷

With rare exceptions, such as a monochrome baluster-shaped pepper caster in the collection of The Corning Museum of Glass (Fig. 14) that is cut and architectural in form rather than enameled, matters were different in England.²⁸ The local glass industry was less closely tied to the few porcelain manufacturers, and it was not the latter’s ingenuity and design that influenced glassmaking but rather England’s direct access to Asian sources through its East India Company. Like the Dutch Vereenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie (founded in 1602), and the less successful French Compagnie des Indes (founded in 1664), the English East India Company (founded in 1600) was established in Canton in the early 18th century, and it exported to Britain increasingly large quantities of Chinese porcelain until the firm declined at the turn of the 19^th century.²⁹ In both shape and decoration, mid-18th-century white glass from glasshouses in South Staffordshire and Avon closely resembles traditional Chinese and Japanese porcelain (Fig. 15).³⁰ Notably, the enameled figural and flower decorations are related to mid-17th-century Kakiemon painting on Japanese vessels, and the shape of many 18th-century glass vases is also found in porcelain of the Qianlong dynasty (1735–1796) (Fig. 16).³¹ Over time, the polychrome enamels and their vivid color schemes endured, while both the iconography and the shape of the objects became more European (Fig. 17).³²

The large number of surviving objects suggests that this type of imitation porcelain developed and flourished in tandem with true porcelain. The markets for enameled white glass and porcelain in England grew simultaneously with that for imported Chinese wares—and, to a lesser extent, continental European porcelain in this style, such as Chantilly porcelain of the 1730s— and together they both stimulated and satisfied the fashion for chinoiserie-style objects (Figs. 18 and 19).³³ In England, the manufacture of opaque glass did not precede that of hard-paste porcelain; instead, opaque glass was produced for sale only when there was already a widespread consumer interest in European porcelain.

Turning to France, in Chantilly, Vincennes, and, later, Sèvres, efforts to make hard-paste porcelain were intensified by Meissen’s mastery of the new medium, but south of the Ile-de-France, in Nevers and Orléans, a unique production of milk glass had flourished since the 1670s.³⁴ In France, as in England, improvements in opaque glass and porcelain (especially at Sèvres) proceeded in parallel, but the manufacture of both blown glass vessels and flameworked figurines and dioramas gained importance and survived as independent genres, along with the later and much more numerous porcelain goods. A goblet (Fig. 20), a beaker (Fig. 21), and a clock (Fig. 22) in The Corning Museum of Glass, which date from the early 19th century, demonstrate the refinement and creativity of glass artists at, for example, the Verreries et Cristalleries de Baccarat (founded in 1765) and the Cristalleries de Saint-Louis (re-established in 1829). These objects confirm the development of a medium that preceded hard-paste porcelain but subsequently adapted its stylistic features to remain in demand.

Throughout Europe, opaque white—and, at times, opaque colored—glass showed a strong stylistic resemblance to porcelain. This general observation may be illustrated by brief surveys of individual local manufacturing practices, but the aforementioned differences in the opacity of glass, which are specific to particular glasshouses and countries but not necessarily to particular periods of time, strongly suggest that glassmakers looked toward Chinese or European porcelain for inspiration. Although it may not seem surprising for porcelain makers such as the Vezzi brothers to have produced a densely opaque glass in imitation of porcelain, it is altogether remarkable that the quest for white glass led to a multitude of chemical recipes—much as in early European porcelain—that determined the density and color nuances found in the finished product.³⁵

In the 16th and 17th centuries, objects made in white glass were glasslike rather than porcelainlike. They were produced in white rather than colorless glass so as to provide a monochrome background for the application of polychrome enamel colors, or to display the elegant aesthetics of their form rather than their decoration. Another group of objects attests to a different influence of porcelain on glass. In this group, vessels in colorless glass closely resemble porcelain objects in shape and fulfill the same utilitarian purposes. Covered dishes (Fig. 23) and glacières (Fig. 24) of colorless glass are among the objects that repeat in glass the types of vessels manufactured by the most celebrated porcelain factories, such as Meissen and Sevres. New types of tableware, such as glacières, illustrate changes in dining customs and new fashions in vessels employed in elaborate table settings, but they also reveal the adaptability of various objects made of porcelain, glass, or silver that had been combined in such settings since the 17th century. As descriptions and rare depictions of buffets and dining tables show, precious domestic treasures were further ennobled by pairing them with nonfunctional glass table ornaments, trionfi, silver- and gold-mounted hard stones and shells, and imported East Asian goods.³⁶

Turning our attention from the effect of Asian wares on Europe to the influence of similar European products on the East, it must be noted that while Europeans coveted widely disseminated and highly fashionable Chinese wares, this enthusiasm was not reciprocated.³⁷ It was the scientific inclinations of European Christian missionaries that led to a refinement of glassmaking skills that had a lasting impact on the glass industry in China.³⁸

The variety of translucent colors and the technique of overlaying opaque glasses of different colors, combined with traditional local carving techniques and iconographic styles, led to the manufacture of incised and cameo glasses in China.³⁹ The long-established craft of carving hard stones such as jade prompted glasshouses to produce blown vessels and solid figurines in both translucent and opaque glass with figural and floral forms and inscriptions cut into the surface.⁴⁰ With these imitative effects, glass objects took on the translucency, shine, and three dimensional depth of nephrite (Fig. 25). The mastery of this imitation—whether or not it was meant to deceive the eye—resulted from employing stonecutters to work on glass. The method and style of decoration, the iconography and thematic program, and the glass blanks were predominantly Asian in character.⁴¹ Moreover, the kinds of objects produced—including vases, brush pots, and snuff bottles—were typically East Asian.⁴² However, the making of the glass itself involved color formulas of Western manufacture (Fig. 26).⁴³ From the mid-17th to 18th centuries, Christian missionaries lived in China.⁴⁴ Several of these learned men also disseminated and exchanged scientific knowledge, including advances in European glassmaking.⁴⁵ Deep translucent ruby reds and various matte opaque colored glasses were first produced in glasshouses founded and supervised by such foreign scientists as Kilian Stumpf (1655–1720).⁴⁶ He had trained with the Jesuit priest and glassmaker Christoph Diem (b. 1636), who had worked with Johann Daniel Crafft (1624–1697), an assistant of the great alchemist Johann Rudolf Glauber (1604–1670).⁴⁷ Stumpf became a missionary to China in the 1680s and organized glassworks in Beijing, extending the influence and innovations of European alchemists to East Asia.⁴⁸ These contributions, and the exchange of scientific knowledge and results from practical experiments and laboratory-based experience in empirical science, were an important part of the Enlightenment.⁴⁹

Subtle and elegant monochrome objects were juxtaposed with cased glasses in which one or more layers of bold colors—bright red, yellow, blue, green, and white—covered lighter-colored glass and were then partly cut away to create decoration in relief (Fig. 27).⁵⁰ Finely carved pieces with layers of four or five different colors —some applied in sections rather than as complete wraps—are among the most striking of these objects (Fig. 28).

Chinese glasshouses also excelled in the production of enameled glass that, like its European counterpart, recalls the technical and decorative qualities of fired and painted porcelain. Drawing on the long tradition of porcelain making— practiced since the Tang dynasty—and China’s widespread exports of porcelain wares, gaffers blew and enameled opaque white glass in imitation of porcelain for local and foreign markets (Fig. 29).⁵¹ Scientific analysis (by X-ray fluorescence) of a few of these objects in The Corning Museum of Glass has revealed that the batch composition of some of the white glass used in the East is closely related to that of glasses made in imitation of porcelain by German craftsmen.⁵² Indeed, both the decoration and the chemistry of white glasses made in Germany and China are very similar. For example, the white bottle (Fig. 3) was made in Saxony in the 1710s from a potash-lime-silica mix that contains some arsenic, while the pair of white and enameled Chinese vases of the 18th century (Fig. 29) are mixed alkali-lime-silica glass with a moderate amount of arsenic.⁵³ It is tempting to suggest a connection to and influence of the community around Kilian Stumpf as the reason for such results.

This survey of a limited number of Chinese artifacts shows that objects in white glass are commonly enameled and closely resemble porcelain, while cameo glasses are related, in both style and technique, to carved hard-stone vessels. Glassmaking in 18th-century China was not an independent art form, but rather an industry that depended on traditional designs and artisanal practices.

An altogether different phenomenon can be observed in a group of 19th-century Japanese objects made of colorless lead glass, with or without colored overlays, that was deeply cut in geometric patterns.⁵⁴ Glasses from the Satsuma Clan Factory, which reflect Dutch and English influences in decoration, were part of the fashion for cut crystal table wares that had existed in Japan since its opening to the Western world during the Bakumatsu period (1853–1867) (Fig. 30).⁵⁵

These developments facilitated an exchange of Western and Eastern styles, and initiated a wave of influences at both ends of the former Silk Road. Chinese glassmakers worked in the cameo technique, Japanese glasshouses produced cut glass, and European artists formulated japonisme, a style that, although it repeated the Western desire for exotica first expressed in chinoiserie designs, created a new range of shapes, forms, and decorative motifs, and expanded the repertoire of artistic techniques.⁵⁶

When East met West, Europeans were strongly influenced by East Asian decorative styles and traditional Eastern iconography. Because European artisans lacked access to Chinese technology, both porcelain and glass were developed independently in Europe. In the East, by contrast, Europeans influenced the development of glass recipes and the technological possibilities they offered. The aspirations of craftsmen to produce glass and porcelain—and to imitate in one medium the attributes of the other—led, from the early 18th century on, to the international exchange of glass and porcelain technology, with Kilian Stumpf bringing glassmaking techniques to China and Christoph Conrad Hunger carrying porcelain formulas to Vienna, Venice, and beyond.⁵⁷ The Chinese, however, did not adopt Western decorative styles so readily.

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Florian Knothe
This article was published in the Journal of Glass Studies, Vol. 52 (2010), 201–216.

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Acknowledgments. I am greatly indebted to Dr. Robert H. Brill, research scientist emeritus at The Corning Museum of Glass, and to Grace Chuang, an independent art historian. Their scientific knowledge of vitreous materials and their advice were invaluable in improving this article.

Notes

¹John King Fairbank and Merle Goldman, China: A New History, Cambridge, Massachusetts: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1998, p. 92.

²It remains unclear how far Polo actually traveled and how many business contacts he made. These subjects have been studied by scholars to determine the accuracy of his diary Il milione (The travels of Marco Polo), first issued in manuscript form by Rustichello da Pisa in 1295.

³For the early importation and influence of Chinese porcelain in medieval Italy, see David Whitehouse, “Chinese Porcelain in Medieval Europe,” Medieval Archaeology, v. 16, 1972, pp. 63–78.

⁴For the influence of Chinese porcelain on the electors of Saxony, see Eva Ströber, “The Earliest Documented Ming- Porcelain in Europe: A Gift of Chinese Porcelain from Ferdinando de’ Medici (1549–1609) to the Dresden Court,” in The International Asian Art Fair, New York: the fair, 2006, p. 11.

⁵Emily Byrne Curtis, Glass Exchange between Europe and China, 1550–1800: Diplomatic, Mercantile and Technological Interactions, Farnham, U.K., and Burlington, Vermont: Ashgate, 2009, pp. 101–106.

⁶This survey accompanies an exhibition of the same title, which was on display at The Corning Museum of Glass from November 18, 2010, to October 30, 2011. It presented some 60 objects from the Museum’s European and Asian collections.

⁷Early advances in English porcelain making are still being researched, and chemical compositions are being studied and compared in order to evaluate a small group of late 17th-century vessels preserved at Burghley House, Lincolnshire, U.K., which were introduced in six articles titled “The Earliest English Porcelains?” in Transactions of the English Ceramic Circle, v. 20, pt. 1, 2008, pp. 167–230.

⁸Ulrich Pietsch, “Tschirnhaus und das europäische Porzellan,” in Ehrenfried Walther von Tschirnhaus (1651–1708): Experimente mit dem Sonnenfeuer, Dresden: Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden, 2001, pp. 68–69.

⁹Ibid. Tschirnhaus gained a thorough knowledge of the chemical composition of Asian porcelain by melting a piece of Chinese porcelain, revealing its constituents to be alumina, silica, and calcium, as he wrote to his friend, the German philosopher and mathematician Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646–1716) in 1694. See Sarah Richards, Eighteenth-Century Ceramics: Products for a Civilised Society, Studies in Design, Manchester, U.K.: Manchester University Press, 1999, p. 22. I am indebted to Grace Chuang for her insights and this reference.

¹⁰Ibid., pp. 72–73.

¹¹Gisela Haase, “Tschirnhaus und die sachsischen Glasshutten in Pretzsch, Dresden und Glucksburg,” in Ehrenfried Walther von Tschirnhaus [note 8], pp. 61 and 63. Haase quotes (p. 63) from a letter Tschirnhaus wrote to Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz on October 6, 1700, praising the successes of the newly established Dresden glasshouse and alluding to the advantages he saw for his porcelain research, saying that “dass vornehmste ist dass [ich] nunmehro ein stettes fewer umsonst habe, da [ich] vieles propiren kan, und dass [ich] herrliche glässer werde haben können, umb die opticam ad talem perfectionem zu bringen, wie ich in Idea habe” (The finest of all is that I have a free, constant fire now, so I can experiment a lot, and that I have good glasses, which I can improve as it is my idea). Original correspondence in the Landesbibliothek Hannover, block 135.

¹²The elegant Netherlandish goblet is closely similar to turned ivory Pokals that were produced in princely workshops in Renaissance Bavaria.

¹³Dedo von Kerssenbrock-Krosigk, Glass of the Alchemists: Lead Crystal–Gold Ruby, 1650–1750, Corning: The Corning Museum of Glass, 2008, cat. no. 109, p. 284.

¹⁴Haase [note 11], p. 61. See also Dirk Syndram, “Jasper Porcelain, Gold Ruby Glass and Local Gemstones—On the ‘Transmutation’ of Baroque Treasury Art,” in Böttger Stoneware: Johann Friedrich Böttger and Treasury Art, ed. Dirk Syndram and Ulrike Weinhold, Dresden: Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden, 2009, pp. 72–82.

¹⁵Sabine Baumgärtner, Sächsisches Glas: Die Glashütten und ihre Erzeugnisse, Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner Verlag GmbH, 1977, pp. 28, 56, 59, and 60. One such artist was Daniel Springer, an independent glass cutter and engraver in Dresden from 1695 and director of the Sächsische Glasfabrique from 1717.

¹⁶The style of Böttger’s early clay vessels imitated that of Chinese red ware (Zisha Taoqi), also referred to as Yixing earthenware, after the pottery-producing county of Yixing in Jiangsu province in eastern China, where production dates back to the Song dynasty (960–1279), and from where objects were commonly exported to Europe from the 17th century on. Baumgärtner states (ibid., p. 59) that engraved medallions with emblems and French devices provided the pictorial repertoire of early glasses from the Dresden glasshouse.

¹⁷Otto Walcha, Meissen Porcelain, New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1981, p. 45; Elisabeth Sturm-Bednarczyk, “The Early Viennese Porcelain of Claudius Innocentius du Paquier,” Artibus et Historiae, v. 26, no. 52, 2005, p. 169.

¹⁸William Richard Drake, Notes on Venetian Ceramics, London: John Murray, 1868, pp. 17–21.

¹⁹For the Vezzi porcelain manufactory, see Francesco Stazzi, Porcellane della casa eccellentissima Vezzi (1720–1727), Milan: V. Scheiwiller, 1967; and Luca Melegati, Giovanni Vezzi e le sue porcellane, Milan: Bocca, 1998.

²⁰For Venice, the loss of its monopoly in the 17th century brought about many changes in its glass industry: “As there no longer was a profitable market for her [Venice’s] traditional styles, she backed up those craftsmen who could ably produce glasses in the Bohemian fashion [finely engraved and cut glass] or successfully imitate porcelain” (Paul N. Perrot, Three Great Centuries of Venetian Glass, Corning: The Corning Museum of Glass, 1958, p. 25).

²¹See, among others, Hugh Tait, The Golden Age of Venetian Glass, London: British Museum Publications Ltd., 1979, pp. 27–28; and Anna-Elisabeth Theuerkauff-Liederwald, Venezianisches Glas der Veste Coburg, Lingen: Luca Verlag, 1994, pp. 24–26.

²²250 Jahre Schweizer Glasmacherkunst: Vom Flühli- bis zum Hergiswiler-Glas, Lucerne: Glas-Galerie Luzern, 1981; Heinz Horat, Flühli-Glas, Bern and Stuttgart: Paul Haupt, 1986.

²³Horat [note 22], pp. 189–191, fig. 253. Additional objects in this style at The Corning Museum of Glass include a teapot (74.3.164), a bowl (75.3.103), and cups and saucers (74.3.164 and 75.3.99).

²⁴250 Jahre Schweizer Glasmacherkunst [note 22], pp. 16–17.

²⁵I thank William Gudenrath for his opinion on the quality of the craftsmanship seen in this group of objects.

²⁶Robert and Deborah Truitt, “Harrach Glassworks: 300 Years of Quality and Innovation,” Journal of Glass Studies, v. 47, 2005, p. 108.

²⁷Other teapots (The Corning Museum of Glass, 53.3.9 and 75.3.93), plates (75.3.107 and 75.3.111), teacups and saucers (50.3.59 and 79.3.295), vases (58.3.204 and 71.3.127), and a candle stand (63.3.13) may be linked to Bohemian or Thuringian glasshouses. For a similar cup and saucer from Thuringia, see accession number 2317 in the Victoria and Albert Museum, London.

²⁸Robert Charleston was the first to examine opaque white English glass and to attribute particular objects and styles to individual glasshouses. See Robert J. Charleston, “English Eighteenth-Century Opaque White Glass,” The Magazine Antiques, v. 66, no. 4, October 1954, pp. 294–297, and v. 66, no. 6, December 1954, pp. 488–491.

²⁹Edwin J. Hipkiss, “Chinese Export Porcelains of the Helena Woolworth McCann Collection,” Bulletin of the Museum of Fine Arts, v. 41, no. 245, October 1943, pp. 46–51, esp. p. 50.

³⁰Robert J. Charleston, English Glass and the Glass Used in England, circa 400–1940, London: George Allen and Unwin, 1984, pl. 45.

³¹Herbert H. Sanders, The World of Japanese Ceramics, Tokyo and Palo Alto, California: Kodansha International, 1967, p. 217, pl. 37; Anthony Du Boulay, Chinese Porcelain, London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1970, pp. 91–104, figs. 91, 92, and 98. This interest is also demonstrated in exports of 18th-century Chinese porcelain, especially in objects made in the famille rose design. See Michel Beurdeley, Chinese Trade Porcelain, Rutland, Vermont: C. E. Tuttle Co., 1962, pp. 30–31; and Chinese Glass Paintings & Export Porcelain, New York: Chinese Porcelain Company, 1996, cat. nos. 45–47.

³²Other objects in this style at The Corning Museum of Glass include two South Staffordshire scent bottles from about 1760 (84.2.24 and 86.2.25), as well as another snuff bottle dating from 1765 to 1770 (86.2.32) and a tumbler made at the workshop of James Giles in London between 1770 and 1775 (64.2.5).

³³Chantilly porcelain of the 1730s copied Japanese ceramics with Kakiemon decoration from the last quarter of the 17th century. For East Asian–style porcelain produced in Chantilly, see Jean-Gabriel Peyre, “La Porcelaine de Chantilly à l’honneur,” L’Objet d’Art, no. 452, December 2009, p. 32.

³⁴Francois Boutillier, La Verrerie et les gentilshommes verriers de Nevers, Nevers: Imp. Fay, G. Vallière, successeur, 1885; Bernard Perrot (1640–1709), Orleans: Musee des Beaux-Arts, 2010.

³⁵The choice and availability of the opacifier and the amount of it in the batch composition governed the degree of whiteness in the glass.

³⁶Wolfram Koeppe, ed., The Art of the Royal Court: Treasures in Pietre Dure from the Palaces of Europe, New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, and New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press, 2008, pp. 232–237, 248–249, 252–256, 271–273, and 278–279.

³⁷The Chinese emperor Qianlong (r. 1736–1795) was famous for his interest in European clocks and mechanical toys. This interest, however, remained a private one, which was enjoyed solely within the royal palaces.

³⁸The earliest excavated glass that is thought to have originated in China is at least as early as the Warring States Period (475–227 B.C.). See C. G. Seligman and Horace C. Beck, Far Eastern Glass: Some Western Origins, Stockholm: Museum of Far Eastern Antiquities, 1938, pp. 1–64, esp. pp. 15–16; and Yang Boda, “An Account of Qing Dynasty Glassmaking,” in Scientific Research in Early Chinese Glass, ed. Robert H. Brill and John H. Martin, Corning: The Corning Museum of Glass, 1991, pp. 131–132 and 144.

³⁹For a survey, see Phelps Warren, “Later Chinese Glass, 1650–1900,” Journal of Glass Studies, v. 19, 1977, pp. 84–126; and Peter Hardie, “The Origins of Chinese Carved Overlay Glass,” ibid., v. 25, 1983, pp. 231–237.

⁴⁰Such objects combine techniques seldom seen in the West, such as deeply cut (Hochschnitt) carving on ruby glass, and carved rather than applied foot-rings.

⁴¹Occasionally, Chinese glasshouses adopted Western techniques, including filigrana and marbled and aventurine glass, and such surface treatments as diamond-point engraving and gold painting. For a comprehensive survey, see Peter Hardie, “Glass in China: Late Ming to Early Qing,” Transactions of the Oriental Ceramic Society, v. 55, 1990–1991, pp. 9–28.

⁴²In the West, these forms were collected as exotic curiosities. See Carl L. Crossman, The Decorative Arts of the China Trade: Paintings, Furnishings, and Exotic Curiosities, Woodbridge, Suffolk, U.K.: Antique Collectors’ Club, 1991, pp. 19–20.

⁴³The fact that early 18th-century ruby glass, such as the bowls illustrated in Figure 26, is crizzled exemplifies the experimental character and quality of objects made from unstable batch formulas. See Kerssenbrock-Krosigk [note 13], p. 299.

⁴⁴See, among others, George Loehr, “Missionary-Artists at the Manchu Court,” Transactions of the Oriental Ceramic Society, v. 34, 1962–1963, pp. 51–67.

⁴⁵Emily Byrne Curtis, “Glass for K’ang Hsi’s Court,” Arts of Asia, v. 21, no. 5, September/October 1991, pp. 130–136.

⁴⁶Donald Rabiner, “Chinese Glass and the West,” in A Chorus of Colors: Chinese Glass from Three American Collections, San Francisco: Asian Art Museum of San Francisco, 1995, pp. 17–21; Emily Byrne Curtis, “‘Complete Plan of the Glass Workshop,’” in Pure Brightness Shines Everywhere: The Glass of China, ed. Emily Byrne Curtis, Aldershot, U.K.: Ashgate, 2004, pp. 49–57.

⁴⁷Werner Loibl, “Itineraries of Glass Innovation: Johann Rudolf Glauber and His Followers,” in Kerssenbrock-Krosigk [note 13], pp. 71–73.

⁴⁸Dedo von Kerssenbrock-Krosigk, Rubinglas des ausgehenden 17. und des 18. Jahrhunderts, Mainz: Philipp von Zabern, 2001, p. 55.

⁴⁹Pamela Smith is the pioneer researcher of the exchange of knowledge across both geographical and social borders. See, among other texts on the scientific revolution, Pamela H. Smith, “Vital Spirits: Redemption, Artisanship, and the New Philosophy in Early Modern Europe,” in Rethinking the Scientific Revolution, ed. Margaret J. Osler, Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 2000, pp. 119–135; and idem, The Body of the Artisan: Art and Experience in the Scientific Revolution, Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 2004, pp. 17–20.

⁵⁰This fashion seems to have been favored by the emperor because it was practiced at the glasshouse on the grounds of the royal palace. See Emily Byrne Curtis, “Plan of the Emperor’s Glassworks,” Arts Asiatiques (Annales du Musée National des Arts Asiatiques–Guimet et du Musee Cernuschi), no. 56, 2001, pp. 82–84.

⁵¹For the dissemination of Chinese glass wares, see Emily Byrne Curtis, “Foucquet’s List: Translation and Comments on the Color ‘Blue Sky after Rain,’’’ Journal of Glass Studies, v. 41, 1999, pp. 147–152; and idem, “Chinese Glass: ‘A Present to His Czarish Majesty,’” Journal of Glass Studies, v. 51, 2009, pp. 138–143.

⁵²I am indebted to Dr. Robert H. Brill for evaluating the objects discussed in this article.

⁵³The analysis of a mid-18th-century English white enameled vase (86.2.15) shows that this piece contains lead—as is typically found in English production after the mid-17th century— but no lime, and that the lead-potash-silica glass has a high content of arsenic, probably a lead oxy-arsenate opacifier.

⁵⁴For a recent survey of stylistic and cultural influences on Japanese glass, see Japanese Glass: Stylish Vessels, Playful Shapes, Tokyo: Suntory Museum of Art, 2010, esp. pp. 100– 104, 112, 123, 128–130, 134, 138, 146–147, 176–177, and 183–185.

⁵⁵Dorothy Blair, A History of Glass in Japan, Tokyo: Kodansha International, and Corning: The Corning Museum of Glass, 1973, pp. 236–240.

⁵⁶See, among other objects of this date, an English vase in The Corning Museum of Glass (2009.2.1) that imitates a Japanese carved ivory brush pot, published in “Recent Acquisitions,” The Gather (newsletter of the Corning Museum), Spring 2010, p. 15.

⁵⁷Hunger returned to Saxony in 1724 and was later hired to establish porcelain manufactories in Denmark (1737) and Russia (1744). See Giovanni Favero, “Old and New Ceramics: Manufacturers, Products, and Markets in the Venetian Republic in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries,” in At the Centre of the Old World: Trade and Manufacturing in Venice and the Venetian Mainland, 1400–1800, ed. Paola Lanaro, Toronto: CRRS (Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies) Publications, 2006, p. 291.

Published on January 15, 2013