All About Glass

All About Glass

This is your resource for exploring various topics in glass: delve deeper with this collection of articles, multimedia, and virtual books all about glass. Content is frequently added to the area, so check back for new items. If you have a topic you'd like to see covered, send us your suggestion. If you have a specific question, Ask a Glass Question at our Rakow Research Library.

Laboratory Studies of Some Glasses from Vergina
Article

Colorless Glasses in Antiquity Most glass objects of the second and first millennia B.C. were strongly colored, as are the precious stones they were meant to imitate. Those that were not intentionally colored usually had a pronounced greenish tint, owing to the presence of iron impurities

An Inlaid Glass Plate in Athens: Laboratory Examination
Article

Introduction In recent years it has become apparent that laboratory examinations of ancient glass might provide archaeologists and historians with valuable information about both ancient glass and the history of technology. At present several scientists working in this field are developing those

An Observation on the Corinth Diatretum
Article

A great deal of attention has been directed toward understanding how Roman vasa diatreta were made. 1 Many of those who have handled the objects are convinced that they were made by deep cutting and undercutting heavy-walled blanks. Others have proposed explanations which require that the posts

Glassmakers Of Herat
Video

In 1968, a one room working glass factory with a mud-brick furnace was discovered in western Afghanistan. This factory is owned by cousins, Saifullah and Saidullah. Glassmaking has been a family tradition for over 200 years, and continues to be done in the same manner as described in seventh

Stories from The Flood of '72: Dr. Robert Brill
Video

"Our goal was to overcome defeatism before it ever had a chance to set in, and to provide encouragement for the stricken people of the community," declared Dr. Robert H. Brill, director of the Museum during the post-flood restoration period. The Flood of '72: Community, Collections,

Museum Under Water: The Corning Flood of 1972
Video

On June 23, 1972, Corning, New York and the surrounding communities were devastated by a major flood, as a result of the tropical storm Agnes. At The Corning Museum of Glass, hundreds of objects were broken, more than half of the Library's materials were saturated with flood water, and the

Chemical Analyses of Amelung Glasses
Article

Introduction Chemical analyses and laboratory studies of glasses from the ancient and medieval worlds have provided a great deal of useful information for archaeologists, curators, and historians, 1 but until now, few such studies have been carried out on glasses from more recent periods. One

Stained Glass from Saint-Jean-des-Vignes (Soissons) and Comparisons with Glass from Other Medieval Sites
Article

The abbey of Saint-Jean-des-Vignes has dominated the urban landscape of the northern French city of Soissons since the 11th century. 1 Formally established in 1076, the abbey was built, rebuilt, sacked, and restored from its founding to the present day. In its Gothic phase, the church measured more

Scientific Investigations of Some Glasses from Sedeinga
Article

In 1973, Prof. Jean Leclant described the glass excavated at Sedeinga, a meroitic site in Sudan. 1 Among the objects are two extremely important footed flutes bearing elaborate "painted, and gilded polychrome decorations. Professor Leclant dated the tombs in which the glasses were uncovered to

Analyses of Some Finds from the Gnalić Wreck
Article

Fragments of eight types of objects excavated from the Gnalić shipwreck were submitted to The Corning Museum of Glass for examination and chemical analysis. 1 The specimens, which are from the collections of the Narodni Museum in Zadar, consisted of fragments of six glass objects and two pigment

The Use of Equilibrated Silica Gel for the Protection of Glass with Incipient Crizzling
Article

In a previous publication 1 we have discussed glasses showing incipient crizzling, that is, glasses in the earliest stages of crizzling. This condition threatens many pieces of European, East Asiatic, and American glasses manufactured between the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries. Examples exist