AMONG the striking early English glasses from the Barry Richards Collection which have now, at last, found a per- manent home in the Victoria & Albert Museum, is a large pedestal-bowl (Fig.1, no.1 of the list in the Appendix below) with many seventeenth-century features. The heavy lead-metal glass, the gadrooning 'nip't diamond waies' round the base of the bowl, and the triple line of threading nipped together at intervals, are all features which would invite a late-seventeenth-century dating; but the style may well have continued beyond 1700 and could bring the bowl a little closer in date to the inscription of 1727 which embellishes it. The inscription 'John Richie and Christian Cochrane 1727' is written in a beautiful and regular italic and is accompanied, above and below, by calligraphic scroll-borders of alternating and contrasting thicks and thins, the whole complemented by a beautifully rendered flying bird in the top right-hand corner.

THE Gemeentemuseum in The Hague has recently acquired a monumental piece of Venetian Glass (Fig. 16), made in the last quarter of the nineteenth century by the firm Salviati & C. It is a blown dish, 58.3 cm. in diameter, made of colourless glass with a smoky tint. It has a shallow well and a broad border with a folded rim; a ring of small scars round the centre on the back shows the place where the pontil was attached during the manufacture. The well is painted in polychrome enamel with a mythological scene depicting Bacchus, Ariadne and Venus, closely based on Tintoretto's famous picture in the anticollegio of the Palazzo Ducale in Venice (Fig.17).* The centripetal composition of this painting, which 'swings slowly like a wheel' around the three hands in the centre, proves particularly suitable for adaption on a circular panel.

of the Palazzo Ducale in Venice (Fig.17).* The centripetal composition of this painting, which 'swings slowly like a wheel' around the three hands in the centre, proves particularly suitable for adaption on a circular panel.

WHAT began as a small study of purely personal interest - an attempt to resolve why some eighteenth-century engraved commemorative glasses, the Irish 'Volunteer' series, should paradoxically have shared stylistic charac- teristics with the products of a much later glass-engraver in Dublin, Franz Tieze (d.1932) - has already led to the re-attribution of many 'eighteenth-century' glasses in Ireland's two principal museums, in the Victoria & Albert Museum and in the Museum of London (where first-hand examination of such glass has been feasible).* It is now becoming possible to discern a common feature which apparently also extends to other types of engraved- commemorative glassware, not just those of Irish origin. The events and sympathies which many such glasses pro- claim seem to be more relevant to some 're-invented' versions of history - as interpreted and promoted by certain 'brotherhoods' and political movements during the late-nineteenth century - than they are to historical reality.

THE collecting of English glass, and its literature, are barely a century old, the first book on the subject being Albert Hartshorne's Old English Glasses of 1897. His statement, when writing of Ravenscroft, that 'none of these sealed Ravenscroft-Costa glasses have been recognised at the present day' might well have been interpreted by glass collectors of the time as a challenge to their skills of detec- tion, with the prospect of distinguishing English examples from amongst the surviving 'Anglo-Venetian' glass. In fact, most chose a softer option, believing Hartshorne's delightful myth that Waterford glass could be distin- guished by its 'pale blue tinge'. Thus was born a craze for Irish cut glass which was to last for over 30 years.

of 1897. His statement, when writing of Ravenscroft, that 'none of these sealed Ravenscroft-Costa glasses have been recognised at the present day' might well have been interpreted by glass collectors of the time as a challenge to their skills of detec- tion, with the prospect of distinguishing English examples from amongst the surviving 'Anglo-Venetian' glass. In fact, most chose a softer option, believing Hartshorne's delightful myth that Waterford glass could be distin- guished by its 'pale blue tinge'. Thus was born a craze for Irish cut glass which was to last for over 30 years.

IN 1871 the Victoria and Albert Museum acquired a remarkable example of German baroque glass (Fig.61). The merits of the piece, superbly engraved in intaglio and mounted in enamelled gold, were immediately recognised. The Museum's Art Referee, Sir Matthew Digby Wyatt, noted in his report that it was 'Per- fectly eligible' for acquisition, adding, 'the enamel is most elegant and the glass cutting capital'.

THE years around 1800 saw the end of a long tradition of engrav- ing on glass in the Netherlands, one which stretched back to the introduction of diamond-point engraving in the late- sixteenth century and came to encompass both wheel-engraving (from the late-seventeenth century) and then stipple-engraving, which flourished between 1750 and 1800. There were, however, occasional signs of revival of the art in the first half of the nine- teenth century, the most important figures being Andries Melort (Dordrecht 1776-The Hague 1849) and, slightly later, the Amsterdam pharmacist and art-collector Daniel Henriques de Castro (1806-63).

THE artist Richard Redgrave and Henry Cole, whose friendship began in 1841, collaborated on a number of important projects for over forty years, notably on the improvement of the Govern- ment Schools of Design and subsequently, in the Department of Practical Art, on the creation of the South Kensington Museum. The launch of the Summerly Art-Manufactures by Cole in 1847, with the intention of improving public taste by the production of domestic articles designed by Cole's artist friends and made by the best manufacturers, resulted in an interesting if short-lived episode in the history of design.

JOHN REWALD, who died in New York on 2nd February, was born in Berlin in 1912, and came of age, so to speak, on his first exten- ded trip to Paris in 1932. In later years, he kept in his library in Menerbes a copy after Gauguin's Two Tahitian women made on that first visit (it was never an embarrassment to him, nor should it have been). As he often said, it was remarkable to what degree progressive French nineteenth-century painting was still the province of dealers and a handful of collectors at that time. It is much to the credit of the French university system that his dissertation at the Sorbonne, essentially done without pro- fessorial supervision, on Cezanne and Zola was accepted. It was published in 1936, the year of its submission. Thanks to the rela- tive affluence of his parents (they were successful pharmacists, who moved to Hamburg in his childhood), Rewald was at liberty and leisure to pursue the seemingly unlucrative profession of art history.

made on that first visit (it was never an embarrassment to him, nor should it have been). As he often said, it was remarkable to what degree progressive French nineteenth-century painting was still the province of dealers and a handful of collectors at that time. It is much to the credit of the French university system that his dissertation at the Sorbonne, essentially done without pro- fessorial supervision, on Cezanne and Zola was accepted. It was published in 1936, the year of its submission. Thanks to the rela- tive affluence of his parents (they were successful pharmacists, who moved to Hamburg in his childhood), Rewald was at liberty and leisure to pursue the seemingly unlucrative profession of art history.