There is a peculiar design embodied in the work of the old glass-workers of Venice, for centuries embosomed on the lagoons at Murano, which design is taken straight from the waters of the Adriatic. There is a little denizen of those waters, delicate and of extreme beauty, only some 3 or 4 inches long, known as the sea-horse. He swims in the blue water or curls his tail around a weed. His head is like a Roman horse with arched neck. Those who know the delightful configuration of this creature, the _hippocampus antiquorum_, will realize the parallel. The Venetian glass-worker adapted this design, ready to hand, as the Copenhagen potters have taken the figures of birds and animals of the Baltic to give form and colour to their work. All craftsmen have done this, from the ancient cave-dweller in Bordeaux who scratched the reindeer in motion which he has left for posterity to criticize, to the Japanese with their fishes and birds and insects. The short-nosed sea-horse with its beautiful and graceful form has been snatched by the glass-blower and transfused in the furnace, with skilful and adept art in manipulating the pliant metal, into a handle with conventionalized form. The arched back becomes a row of bead-like ornament in the bow of the handle, a style of ornamentation which peeps out from old Italian glass goblets, still in due subjection. When it crosses the Alps into Germany the foreign glass-worker, knowing nothing of the delicate suggestion of the origin of the ornament, straightway makes the handles into huge appendages, departing more and more from the initial source of inspiration.
[Illustration: JAMES II POSSET-CUP AND COVER. 1685.
Of unusual form. With inscription, “The legacy of your dear grandmother, Mary Leigh.”
(_By courtesy of Messrs. Crichton Brothers._)]
[Illustration: THE POTTER AND THE SILVERSMITH. STAFFORDSHIRE EARTHENWARE POSSET-CUP.
With inscription, “William Simpson His Cup 1685.”]
The glass-blower of Stuart days, a craftsman in metal, and the silver worker meet at this point, and the bead-like ornament is derivative from this old form. It is shown in simpler style in the Charles II porringer of 1672 (illustrated p. 209), and in more elaborate development in the James II posset-pot. The former is nearer to nature, and possibly nearer to the glass-worker.