|
MURRHINA.
|
187
|
||
|
|
|||
|
included
under the name ; all that was required being that the material should
be clouded with various colours, and not present the regular
stratification of the Onyx. In fact, they were exactly the same as the
Agate bowls still imported from India, where the manufacture seems to
be even yet going on, though in a languishing condition. At the sack of
the palace at Delhi in 1858, whole chestfuls of such Agate vases,
having fallen a prey to soldiers less intelligent than the captors of
Talaura, are said to have been wantonly destroyed.
From
the first dawn of the Eenaissance these ancient gem-vases were eagerly
sought after by the wealthy Italians, and imitated by their own
artists, and the prices paid for them remind us faintly of the Roman
extravagance in this particular. The Agate vases belonging to the
French Crown were valued in the last century at half a million of
francs. Their selling-price at the present day, however, is greatly
fallen; they, indeed, fetch much less in London than their first cost
in India.
That
many of the Roman drinking-cups in coloured glass were designed as
imitations of the Murrhina is manifest from their shape, that of a
shallow bowl, a form adopted of necessity by the former, but by no
means indispensable to the latter substance. Though in many of these
bowls the glass-worker has contented himself with exactly reproducing
the dark-brown, the chocolate-colour, and the white clouds of the
original, yet as frequently has he aimed at surpassing Nature by mixing
up the most brilliant tints his laboratory supplied in elegant waves
and concentric circles.
It
is very probable that such vases were imported ready made from India,
as we are informed that the Crystallina were : that they were then
extensively used by the Indian princes, appears from the exaggerated
account Philostratus gives of the dimensions displayed by the various
vessels in
|
|||
|
|
|||