The glass-maker Philippe-Joseph Brocard (1831−1896) acquired a thorough knowledge of the arts of Islam early in life as a restorer for the Rothschild collections and the Musée de Cluny in the period 1850−60. His mastery of transparency, polychromy, iridescence and shaping aroused wonder at the World’s Fairs of 1867 and 1878, a period when another expert enameller, Albert Pfulb, was also producing splendid mosque lamps. Detached from their religious function, these articles were presented as testimony to the decorative genius of the East. The very choice of the object imitated and the calligraphic decoration are indicative of an effort made with varying acuteness to grasp the essence of the Islamic arts while emphasising the distinctiveness of a model diametrically opposed to the Western figurative tradition.