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Corning Museum: Glass of the Ages

 

A visit to the Museum of Glass in Corning, New York is full of both marvels and the mundane, from advanced science and technology to Corelle dinner plates. But while the museum has a lot to say about glass in our lives today, it also has a lot to say about glass's ancient origins.

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The arts and sciences of forming glass into objects that are useful or beautiful or both goes back at least 3500 years. Before that there was obsidian, a natural glass created in volcanic eruptions, and sometimes carved into beads or other shapes, but making glass came later. It appears to have its origin in the Middle East, perhaps in Mesopotamia, perhaps in Egypt

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Beads, it appears, is where it started, possibly as a by-product of Bronze Age metalworking, perhaps in rudimentary forges such as the one modeled above.

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Using silicon, heat and soda ash to produce a true glass, and adding minerals of other sorts to create colors, these early glassmakers created pieces of incredible beauty, such as the Egyptian collar in the title, dating to about 300 BC, as does the multi-colored bowl just above.

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Early glass pieces tended to be not very large, and were made by a process called core-forming. A shape would be formed in sand and clay, and drawn-out strands of glass wrapped around it and melted together. Different strips would produce different colors. After the glass was fused, the core would be scraped out. More pieces could be fused on after for more colorful effects.

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Glass-blowing came along later, in Roman times, although Romans themselves were not allowed to engage in trade; the Empire's glassblowers were mainly in the eastern Mediterranean, including Lebanon and Cyprus. The new process, especially blowing in molds, made glass far more common although still not cheap enough for the masses.

Glass played another important role over many centuries: it was a good choice for scale weights because it makes it hard for cheaters. Shave a bit off a brass weight and give it a little polishing; no one the wiser. Do the same to a glass weight, and the scratches will give the crook away.

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Moving on from the ancient to the merely medieval, Corning's collection includes numbers of impressive pieces illustrating trends of their times. Above, from 1600s, a portable altar dedicated to St Nicholas of Bari, made in Venice.

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Lampworking is another technique for making glass objects; the glass is, in essence, sculpted using a high-intensity flame to create shapes. The mid-1700s model theatre above was made that way. It shows a scene from the Bible, complete with 14 articulated glass figures that can be moved by wires.

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England was the main home of beadwork, creating intricate designs of small glass beads—sort of like embroidering with beads. Originally most were on religious themes, but later, like this basket, many were made to celebrate family occasions such as weddings.

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This, of course, is only a small sample of what's on display in the museum's ancient glass galleries, and what's there is only a small sample of the museum's holdings. In a future blog, we'll take a look at the other end of the timeline: contemporary glasswork.

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The best part of every trip is realizing that it has upset your expectations

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