The History of Glass Production

Introduction

The technique of glass-working has been around for a very long time. Its origins can be found in Ancient Egypt, where beautiful blue and coloured beads and statues of faience, a blue glass, were created as early as 2000 BC (see the scarab to the right).

 

Many glass objects have been found in graves and palaces. However, proper glass vessels only appeared at a later time. The first glass vessels were available from the 8th century BC onwards, starting in Assyria and Asia Minor (as well as, once again, Egypt).

  • The History of Glass Blowing

    Originally, glass working had to be done by hand, by melting the glass and using moulds. However, by the Roman period, glass blowing was invented. It became a common technique around the first century AD. Because of this simplification in the process of glass-production, it became possible to recycle glass on a much larger scale than had been possible before, causing much more mixed chemical composition in the material, which is shown in image to the left.

     

    In Roman and Byzantine times, most glass was produced with the technique of Glass blowing. However, the material first had to be made, and the glass blowers did not do this work themselves. Raw glass was made elsewhere in the Mediterranean and delivered to the glass blowers, who also worked from a selective number of workshops. Only then the glass products were distributed over the cities and towns in the Mediterranean.

     

    Glass was generally created in a naturally greenish-blue hue. In order to create other colours, chemical compounds had to be added or removed from the glass. In general, two compounds were used – antimony or manganese.

     

  • Glass blowing Techniques

    While originally, glass blowing was discovered in Syro-Palestine, it was perfected in Italy.  An image of early glass-blowing can be seen in lowest image to the left, where we see an ancient oil-lamp from Assyria (dated to AD 70), which shows early methods of glass-blowing.

     

    For a long time, archaeologists and other researchers assumed ancient glass blowing used basically the same techniques as glass blowers do today.  This is because most archaeologists do not know enough about glass and its workings, and glass blowers are often unfamiliar with the technical limitations of the past.

     

    An example of this is  the glass blowers bench, which is used in many reconstructions. Ironically, the bench was actually only invented in the 17th century, and could never have been used in ancient times.

     

     

(from Stern 1999, 447)