Note 54 — Chapter VIII

While speaking of the Portland Vase I desire to take the opportunity of putting on record the fact that in 1877 Mr. John Northwood and Mr. Philip Pargeter completed a unique and matchless work of art—a literal copy of the Portland Vase in its own material, glass, and cut by exactly the same process as must have been employed by the artist of the original one thousands of years back. Of this marvellous work I gave a careful account in the “Reliquary,” from which I make the following extract:—“The material is, of course, glass, and, thanks to the skill and perseverance of Mr. Pargeter, this has been produced of as nearly as possible the same rich full deep tone of blue colour, closely approaching to black when seen with the light upon it, but of vast richness in dark blue when the light passes through it. Upon this blue body Mr. Pargeter succeeded in laying a layer of fine white soft opal glass, specially made for the purpose, to a considerable thickness; and the welding of these two together was a process of exceeding difficulty. The two kinds of glass, the one being opaque and the other transparent, are usually of very different degrees of specific gravity (the usual opal being of much lighter material than ordinary glass), but for this special purpose they had to be made of the same degrees of specific gravity and of expansion and contraction. This difficult task was, through the skill and constant trials of Mr. Pargeter, brought to a successful result, and the welding accomplished with the utmost thoroughness and delicacy; not a flaw, or air-bubble, or even partially-united spot being visible in the whole of the work. The body of the vase being entirely coated, even to half-way up the neck, with the opal, it was ready for Mr. Northwood to operate upon, and he set about his herculean task—one he had desired all his life to accomplish—with that spirit of determination that ensured success. For three years he has unceasingly devoted himself to his task, never working less than six hours a day, and oftener more, at his gem-like material, and patiently cutting away, by hand, and by hand only, the opal coating, so as to leave the blue surface clear as a groundwork, and the figures and other parts of the design in relief. The whole of the grouping, the figures, the trees, and indeed every minute portion of the decoration is delicately carved in the opal, and entirely carved and cut by hand as in the original. By the entire cutting away of the opal the amethystine glass of the vase itself is cleared and polished, while by the gradations of thickness in the carving all the most delicate shades of colour, from the finest white to the sweetest of all half-tones—produced by leaving simply a thin and fairylike film of the coating on the body—in blue, are produced. The effect, as may be imagined, is rich and gorgeous in the extreme; but its general effect is the least part of its merit; this lies in the nature of the work itself, in the extreme delicacy and beauty of manipulation, and in the almost microscopic nicety of its finish. It is literally cameo engraving in its highest, most difficult, and most beautiful phase; and the vase, now completed, is indeed, in Art, a ‘gem of the first water,’ and one that can never, in point of execution and in artistic skill, be surpassed.”

I may also add, while speaking of the Portland Vase, that in 1877 one of the first fifty was brought to the hammer and realised £273.