Five Obsidian Tools. CMoG 73.1.12
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According to our Assistant Curator of Ancient and Islamic Glass, the oldest objects in the collection are those displayed in the Glass in Nature area at the Museum. Glass in nature includes obsidian, desert glass, and fulgurites ("petrified lightning"), among others. Much of this material was made by geologic processes tens of thousands, perhaps millions, of years ago. You can read more in this brief article, "Glass in Nature," in All About Glass on the Museum's website.
The Museum also has obsidian blades that were chiseled from raw obsidian by Neolithic people between 5,000-10,000 years ago (see image).
As for human-made glass, pieces that date before 1500 BC are very rare. We have some pieces (mostly beads) that could be that old but are not necessarily that old. This is true for a lot of our early glass – we know it was made in the Late Bronze Age (about 1500-1200 BC), but not when in the Late Bronze Age, because some styles didn’t change very much for those 300 years.
The portrait head of Amenhotep II (79.1.4), probably made when he was pharaoh from 1426 to 1400 BC, is the earliest piece for which we have a clear date. Other candidates for earliest piece on view are the two pieces from the Near East in the Origins of Glassmaking case: Disk Pendant with Star Pattern (63.1.26) and Pendant with Nude Female (55.1.64).
As for the oldest piece of man-made glass anywhere, there are a couple of beads and other small pieces of glass that have been found in archaeological contexts of the 3rd millennium BC (4,000-5,000 years ago, or 3000-2000 BC). The best known piece of really old glass in a museum is in the British Museum. It is a piece of blue raw glass found at the site of Eridu in modern Iraq. It dates before 2050 BC, or more than 4,000 years ago. There’s a bit more information, and a photo, on the British Museum website.
Listen to Dr. David Whitehouse discuss the portrait head of Amenhotep II:
Also read The Corning Museum of Glass blog post, "Akhenaten and Amenhotep: Two Egyptian kings on display at CMoG" (March 21, 2013).
For more in-depth research, you might be interested in the following:
Younger researchers might be interested in the following:
If you wish to borrow copies of library items, please contact your local library. The Rakow Research Library will lend designated books from its collection and will send copies of articles requested by other libraries. Your library can request items through the OCLC WorldShare Interlibrary Loan (ILL) system or by direct request through email at ill@cmog.org. For more information, please see our ILL policies and procedures.
Feel free to contact us any time you have a glass-related question!
People had used naturally occurring glass, especially obsidian (the volcanic glass) before they learned how to make glass. Obsidian was used for production of knives, arrowheads, jewelry and money.
The ancient Roman historian Pliny suggested that Phoenician merchants had made the first glass in the region of Syria around 5000BC. But according to the archaeological evidence, the first man made glass was in Eastern Mesopotamia and Egypt around 3500BC and the first glass vessels were made about 1500BC in Egypt and Mesopotamia. For the next 300 years, the glass industry was increased rapidly and then declined. In Mesopotamia it was revived in the 700BC and in Egypt in the 500’s BC. For the next 500 years, Egypt, Syria and the other countries along the eastern coast of the Mediterranean Sea were centers for glass manufacturing.
In the beginning it was very hard and slow to manufacture glass. Glass melting furnaces were small and the heat they produced was hardly enough to melt glass. But in the 1st century BC, Syrian craftsmen invented the blow pipe. This revolutionary discovery made glass production easier, faster and cheaper. Glass production flourished in the Roman Empire and spread from Italy to all countries under its rule. In 1000 AD the Egyptian city of Alexandria was the most important center of glass manufacture. Throughout Europe the miraculous art of making stained glass on churches and cathedrals across the continent reached its height in the finest Chatres and Conterbury cathedral windows produced in the 13th and 14th centuries.
The very first glass known to stone age people which was used for making weapons and decortaive objects, was obsidian, black volcanic glass. The earliest known man made glass are date back to around 3500BC, with finds in Egypt and Eastern Mesopotamia. Discovery of glassblowing around 1st century BC was a major breakthrough in glass making.
Glass was first made in the ancient world, but little is known about man’s first efforts to make glass. Amulets and solid beads were made in Mesopotamia as far back as 2500BC. Later, glass making was further developed in Egypt around 1500BC.
Did you ever wonder how glass is made? What are ingredients of glass? How many types of glass are there? Here you can read about glass making process and related information.
By the time of Crusades, glass manufacturing was developed in Venice and it became glassmaking center of the western world. In 1291 glassmaking equipment was transferred to the island of Murano. During 15th century Venetian glass blower, Angelo Barovier, crated cristallo, nearly colorless, transparent glass. By the late 1500’s, many Venetians went to northern Europe seeking better life where they established factories and brought the art of Venetian glassblowing.
By 1575, English glassmakers were made glass in Venetian fashion. In 1674, an English glassmaker George Ravenscroft invented lead glass.
The first glass factory in the United States was built in Jamestown, Virginia in 1608.
In the early 1800’s, there was a great demand for window glass which was called crown glass. In the 1820s, the age of blowing individual bottles, glasses and flasks was ended by the invention of a hand-operated machine. In the 1870s, the first semi-automatic bottle machine was introduced.
After 1890, glass use, development and manufacture began to increase rapidly. Machinery has been developed for precise, continuous manufacture of a host of products. In 1902, Irving W. Colburn invented the sheet glass drawing machine which made possible the mass production of window glass. In 1904, the American engineer Michael Owens patented automatic bottle blowing machine.
In 1959 new revolutionary float glass production was introduced by Sir Alastair Pilkington by which 90% of flat glass is still manufactured today.
For detailed information about this subject read all our articles.
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