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Crystallus, Rock-crystal

Crystallus, Rock-crystal Page of 384 Crystallus, Rock-crystal Text size:minus plus Restore normal size   Mail page  Print this page
106                 NATURAL HISTORY OF GEMS.
opening. In the same way the nozzle and hole for the wick are drawn out in a sharp projection with the greatest ele­gance, and so united with the Crystal that it appears all one piece naturally. The cover, too, is equally well wrought The shape of the shell is like a large sea-shell, encompassed all round with its points, which in this vessel are polished and very smooth, the Crystal being so well worked. There were also vases and different articles in Agate, with certain little animals, eight in all. Amongst these, two very beau­tiful vases, one like those glass ampullae made big and squat for holding oil or such like liquids, so wrought, so elegant, so thin, that it is a marvel to behold; the other, in the shape of those brass ladles with long handles used in Rome for baling water out of cisterns, and supposed to have been a vessel used in sacrifice by the ancients."
These Crystal vases were either embellished with raised mouldings and gadroons, much after the manner of the modern cut-glass, or, if engraved with foliage and figures, these were always in intaglio, the "crystallum impunctum" of Apuleius. For to all ancient ornamentation in relievo a contrast of colours was a necessity, to supply a ground for the figures, which would have been lost upon a substratum of one transparent colourless body. Another advantage Pliny notices, drawn by the artists from this mode of treat­ment—the incised work enabled them to cut out or dis­guise the flaws and red patches too frequently disfiguring the substance.
Many of these vessels were of extraordinary dimensions, though Pliny shelters himself under the authority of Xeno-crates for quoting one as large as an arnphora (a cubic foot), and another, brought from India, holding four sextarii (two quarts). The crowning glory of the magnificent luxury of L. Verus, in Capitolinus' estimation, was the possession of a Crystal bowl, called Volucer, after a favourite race-horse,
Crystallus, Rock-crystal Page of 384 Crystallus, Rock-crystal
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