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Vitrum Annulare, Pastes

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VITRUM ANNULARE.                           329
brought out by the high polish given in the concluding operation to the surface. The back, left rough, clearly exhibits the rationale of the process.
In ' Precious Stones,' p. 221, something has been said respecting the perfection to which the art of mating false gems was carried by the Romans. Pliny, in his description of the precious stones, frequently alludes to the difficulty of detecting their counterfeits in glass. As used in the making of drinking-vessels and for other ornamental purposes, he enumerates the following varieties :—" Glass resembling Obsidian * is made for dishes (escaria vasa) ; also a sort entirely red and opaque, called Hcematinon ; an opaque white also, and imitations of the Agate, the Sapphire, the Lapis-lazuli, and all other colours." j Specimens of all these kinds are met with in abundance amongst other Roman remains even in this country, more particularly the imitation of the Sapphire, a transparent body of the richest blue. The Hcematinon " blood-red " must be the paste, or rather enamel, of that colour, hardly to be distinguished from red Jasper, universally employed in the later mosaics for that tint. Such fragments of the different varieties are collected by the lapidaries at Korne : when cut and polished they are set in bracelets or brooches ; and
* On the strength of this, certain pedants of the last century took to designating all antique pastes, in-espective of their colour, by the name of Obsidian—a piece of false learning which greatly puzzles one at first in using the catalogues of the time ; e. g. in the Marlborough.
t The most admired, however, was the pure colourless, as much like crystal as possible. Merely because this was the most difficult to pro­duce, any iron in the sand giving the glass a blue tint such as the com­moner vessels of the Romans strongly exhibit (Magnes). Old women used to go about Rome buying up broken glasses iu exchange for brim­stone-matches, as Martial tells us "sulfurato ramento Vatiniorum proxe-neta fractorum," which shows the materials for fine glass (the Syrian sand) were somewhat expensive in Italy.
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