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German Waldglas

I think that most people who are interested in art history run the risk of catching collectors syndrome. The walls of postcards and tchotchkes in museum gift shops offer an antidote for those suffering in lieu of their ability to purchase the real thing. I have personally always had a thing for gift shops, and I’ve found that German museums have particularly good ones. After my most recent visit to the Bode-Museum, I eagerly perused its shop’s offerings. I was not let down. My eyes were immediately drawn to a vitrine full of shimmering green glass. It goes without saying that I am a sucker for “historical” stuff, and I could tell that these delicate pieces were hand blown. When I noticed the plaque stating that they were historical replicas I already knew I was going to leave that museum with lighter pockets.

Thus began my interest in the green glass produced from the high middle ages until the late 16th century in the region of Bohemia and Rhineland, the area mostly encompassed by today's Germany. Known in German as Waldglas (Forest Glass), it derives its name not from its typically green tint, but rather from the necessity that the glass production houses stand near forests, so that the taxing amount of firewood required in their production could be met. For this reason it was not uncommon for glasshouses to frequently move locations in order to maintain a constant supply of wood. Unfortunately, while this means that there are plenty of known glasshouse sites, there are few well preserved in the archeological record, and information concerning the production and facilities of Waldglas are scare since the materials from the former structures seem to have been repurposed for later construction and use.

The notable exception to this is lack is a miniature in the late 14th century manuscript Illustrations for Mandeville's Travels (shown below), which is currently held  in the collection of The British Library. In it, the entire process of Waldglas production is illustrated, from gathering the raw materials, to firing in the kiln, and blowing the glass into shapes. This illustration is important particularly because it shows roughly the rectangular design of the kilns used during this period. A contrast to the round kilns described by the 12th century German monk Theophilus in his text describing craft techniques, De diversis artibus.

The development of Waldglas owes to the lack of supply of the previously imported mineral natron, which was used to lower the melting temperature of the glass to make it workable. Natron was common during the Roman period, but when its supply was cut off Northern European glass makers replaced it with tree ash. This resulted in the regionally distinct green to brown tint that characterizes this period of glassmaking. While it was considered crude in comparison with contemporaneous Islamic glass production, the domestic availability of the glass caused it to quickly spread throughout Northern Europe as the older Roman glass needed replacing.

In Peacocks and Penguins the anthropologist Jane Schneider elaborates upon a theory in which she asserts that the distinct access to black dye resources in Northern Europe allowed in part for the developing independence of Northern Europe's economy from Southern Europe and the Levant, as well as playing a political and ideological roll for Northern Europe's eastward invading crusaders. Similarly, I can imagine that Northern European glass makers' reliance on local resources and the consequential aesthetic distinction of Waldglas from it's eastern and southern counterparts contributed to regional economic independence and cultural development. It is of particular interest to me that these glasses were made in large number for domestic use, meaning that their distribution would have been more widespread than more elaborate glassware meant for nobler classes.

The fragility of glass makes it an apt symbol for the instability of social relations and transitory nature of objecthood in the gestalt of history. Arjun Appadurai develops a theory of the unstable position of objects in his introduction to The Social Life of Things, and I will describe the relevant aspect of it here: objects, particularly ones that resist identification as such (Making the plastic arts a fine example. Think "This is not a pipe".), are particularly vulnerable to the type of ideological coercion that produces cultural and political schisms, like those developing during the height of Waldglas production. Perhaps this is better represented in the current historical record in pictorial forms, such as manuscript illustration and painting, but in the spirit of coming closer to the true lived experience of a common Northern European person in the Middle Ages, I think that the ubiquity of Waldglas gave it a cultural value similar to, say, Tupperware. That is if you read feminism as housewives in revolt. To avoid stretching this inquiry too far into conjecture would require a stronger structure of evidence, and thus more research than is appropriate for this post.

My attention was also drawn to a catalogue description of a circa 16th century Waldglas example in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum that describes depictions of nippled glass beakers of similar style in Jewish manuscripts instructing upon seder proceedings. Although no examples were referenced, I was able to dig up some visual evidence on my own from the so called Darmstädter Haggadah, an illuminated manuscript produced around 1450 at the epicenter of Waldglas production in Rhineland. On the right hand side of the illustration the seated figure robed in red raises what appears to be a stylistic example of a Waldglas beaker. Its lower stammen is thinner than the upper goblet of the glass, a later design more similar to today's wineglass, and you can distinctly make out the characteristic protruding nubs of glass on its surface.

According to Met curators, Barbara Drake Boehm and Melanie Holcomb, there were few requirements concerning the form of ritual objects used in Jewish ceremony, and so many non-secular items, such as perhaps Waldglas, were utilized in both Christian and Jewish households. I am interested in the interactions of Jews and Christians in a European context, and it should be noted that during these centuries Jews faced pogroms and antisemitic legislation that led to mass migration to the regions encompassed by modern Poland and the Ukraine. Beakers made from Waldglas were used in a Christian context as containers for reliquaries like the one in the photograph below, and the glass was also used in ecclesiastical stained glass windows, which could be an avenue for further research.

Eventually in the 16th century glass production switched back to the use of potash for Natron as a Flux. This was brought about by the desirability of colorless glass, as well as the overharvest of timber, leading to the creation of laws against its use in glass production. The first known textual description of german glass production since the 12th century is published in 1530 in Res metallica by Georgius Agricola, a preeminent 16th century German mineralogist and metallurgist, in which he describes a return to a circular furnace, in contrast to the one depicted in the Mandeville grisaille. This period also experienced a rise in popularity of the more refined Venetian style of glassmaking (Façon de Venise). Nonetheless Waldglas remained in use for centuries, as evidenced by its reproduction into the present, by those who could not afford the elaborate Façon de Venise glass. Thus, what once signaled low class status and regional isolation today fills a bizarrely orthodox niche for nastolgic home decor. In a recent New York Times Magazine interview, the de facto leader of Germany’s far-right nationalist movement, Björn Höcke, attempts to characterize his racist ideology in terms of a harmless throwback. Höcke’s specious rhetoric underlines the finesse required to untangle the past from present political and historical narratives. For my own sake, I just hope that Höcke doesn’t have any reproduction Waldglas sitting in his cupboard.