Ancient and Islamic Glass and Glassmaking

Soft drink bottles, drinking glasses and glass Christmas ornaments are part of daily modern life, but their roots can be traced to the ancient world and the legacy of Ennion, the earliest known name of a Roman glass worker. This lecture by the Museum's president and executive director, ancient glass expert Dr. Karol Wight, explores the mold-blown glass of ancient Rome, starting with the works of Ennion, the first ancient glass artisan to include his name on the glass he made.

In AD 79, the Bay of Naples was rocked by the dramatic eruption of Mount Vesuvius. Pompeii and Herculaneum—and countless nearby farms, estates, and villages—were completely buried under pumice and super-heated ash. It is arguably the most widely recognized volcanic eruption in recorded history, and the ruins buried under the debris are our most valuable archaeological record of day-to-day life in the Roman Empire. The daily lives of the ordinary people of the cities destroyed by the eruption of Vesuvius are brought to life in this lecture by Dr. Paul Roberts, senior curator, head of the Roman Collections, Greek and Roman Department at The British Museum.

Roman glassworkers, tirelessly creative and inventive, were fond of folding and manipulating inflated glass in a variety of ways for different purposes. Two of their characteristic structures—both functional and beautiful—are demonstrated.

By about A.D. 20, Roman workers had discovered that a bubble of molten glass could be lowered into a mold and then further inflated to fill the mold. In this way, the full-size vessel, complete with elaborate decoration, was made almost instantly.

This was the common method of making small glass vessels from around 1500 B.C. until the discovery of glassblowing. Dung, clay, and glass came together in a seemingly odd process that was indispensable for more than a millennium and a half.

Decorating while glassblowing at the furnace doesn't get more "basic" than this. Although it looks easy, glassblowing students struggle for weeks with every step!

Watch glassmakers recreate ancient Roman glass objects by mold-blowing.

This video was filmed in 2014 at the Roman-style wood-fired furnace in Villa Borg, Germany, which was created especially for researching Roman glassworking techniques.

Learn about ancient iridized glass and a modern method for creating iridized glass surfaces.