Corning Museum of Glass

Martine Newby of London completed a report on the glass finds from the medieval Benedictine monastery of Farfa, near Rome. During the early Middle Ages, Farfa was under the patronage of the Holy Roman emperors, and it became one of the richest and most powerful monasteries in Europe. During seven seasons of excavations by The British School at Rome, more than 4,000 fragments of glass were recovered. These fell into three main periods: Car­olingian, 12th–13th century, and post-medieval. There was also glass from other periods, including Roman fragments and imported pieces of Byzan­tine and Islamic origin.

The glass from Farfa represented the largest collec­tion of medieval glass retrieved from Italy, with the exception of the finds from Tarquinia. Ms. Newby’s study of the Farfa material was to permit the de­velopment of a more detailed typology and chronol­ogy of Italian medieval glass, and eventually be published.