Stained Glass and Imitation Gems

Abstract

There are indications that the art of stained glass and the much older art of imitating precious stones have common techniques. Since mediaeval times a superficial relationship between the two arts has been acknowledged, arising in part from the use of a common vocabulary—it having been the custom of mediaeval and modern glassworkers to describe various colors of glass according to the jewels they most closely resembled—and again by frequent poetic allusions to the “jewel-like” quality of old glass which have appeared, not without justification, in the accounts of scholars and laymen. On the basis of more specialized and technical information from the field of gemmology, however, it may be possible to inquire into this relationship with greater thoroughness, for numerous analyses of imitation gems by experts have suggested a more than superficial connection between these arts.