2008 review of BERETTAand DI PASQUALE. Le verre dans l'empire romain. Réunion des Musées Nationaux, Paris 2006. In: AJA Online Reviews 112.3 (July 2008) (original) (raw)
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This volume surveys the historical relations of science and technology by privileging the interaction between the history of glass and the scientific culture of classical Antiquity and the Middle Age. Within this perspective the case of glass has offered an extremely useful example, showing how the development of theories which have often been regarded as the exclusive result of intellectual activities were in fact the result of the progress of glassmaking techniques obtained by artisans.
"Everything impossible": Admiring Glass in Ancient Rome (Leiden: Brill 2020)
Catherine L. Cooper (ed.) New Approaches to Ancient Material Culture in the Greek & Roman World. 21st-Century Methods and Classical Antiquity, 2020
This paper argues that fine glass dining vessels were prized aesthetic objects in the ancient Roman world. Where a post-Enlightenment bias against applied visual media has allowed these glass works to go under-treated, this paper reexamines this medium through a combined methodological approach of close visual and textual analysis. Drawing upon the possibilities afforded by the development of searchable online databases of Roman texts, the paper analyses not only surviving explicit discussions of glass works (which are few), but also foregrounds references to the medium that are made in passing. It thereby identifies aesthetic emphases that only appear in brief mentions of this material, but which transpire to focus very consistently upon the same visual values. As a result, the paper proposes that works of Roman glassware were explicitly appreciated for the aesthetic effects of light mediated by their surface, both within the compass of the glass, and in the wider space around it. This conclusion is then practically applied to surviving examples of Roman glass objects to explore the visual effects that ancient lighting would have produced. Arguing that the Roman world was highly sensitive to this material's visual allure, the paper presents a new perspective on the medium, grounded in a distinctively Roman mode of aesthetic attentiveness to this art.
The Impact of Glassblowing on the Early-Roman Glass Industry (circa 50 B.C. – A.D. 79)
In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, ancient glass was frequently treated as though it was a prestigious product, owned only by the elites of society. Research was primarily art-historical, and focused on select museum pieces. As archaeology developed, it became clear that glass vessels were used at many, if not most, Roman sites, from the late first century B.C. onward, and in many different social contexts, contradicting the idea that only the rich could afford them. Scholars began to explain the increased prevalence of glass by arguing that the invention of glassblowing (circa 50 B.C.) had increased production speed while lowering production costs, making glass vessels cheap and widely available across the social spectrum This thesis explores the role of blown glass by comparing the percentages and forms produced by older casting techniques in glass vessel assemblages from military sites, civilian sites, frontier settlements, and settings at the heart of the Roman world. It seeks to understand the social and economic status of blown glass and cast glass: why did cast glass persist after the invention of cheaper blown glass? Was cast and blown glass equally accessible to different levels of society? And to what extent can the invention of glassblowing bear responsibility for the rise in glass vessel use in the Roman world? By drawing comparisons between vessels from different production methods, and from different social and geographical contexts, this thesis begins to identify emerging patterns in glass use across Roman society and finds that both cast and blown vessels were used across all levels of society and that there was no strict divide between the use of casting for luxury wares and glassblowing for cheap utilitarian wares.
Cheap, fast, good: the Roman glassblowing revolution reconsidered
Journal of Roman Archaeology, 2019
Among the most dramatic changes in ancient material culture was the widespread adoption of glass vessels for tableware and storage during the 1st c. B.C. and 1st c. A.D. As shown by the quantity of glass finds from occupation sites of the Imperial era, glassware was much more prominent in daily life than it had been previously. This shift occurred concurrently with the widespread adoption of glassblowing. This change in consumer behavior points to a complex process of experimentation, development, and gradual adaptation on the part of both producers and consumers. The transition from centuries-old technologies of core-forming, casting and sagging to blowing required a complete reconfiguration of every stage of glass production, from the increased supply of raw material to the development of new tools and workshop space, and in the training of craftsmen.
Things that travelled - A review of the Roman glass from Northern Adriatic Italy
Things that Travelled - Mediterranean Glass in the First Millennium AD, 2014
The volume aims to contribute to our understanding of glass production, distribution, trade and technologies and to contextualise this material within the social, economic and cultural framework of ancient societies. Chapters encompass various glass artefact groups (jewellery, vessels, secondary and primary production remains) from a plethora of regions such as Greece (Antonaras), Bulgaria (Cholakova and Rehren), Cyprus (Cosyns and Ceglia), the Libyan Sahara (Duckworth and Mattingly), Egypt (Rosenow and Rehren), Italy (Maltoni et al., Silvestri et al.), Jordan (O'Hea), Israel (Phelps), Britain (Sainsbury, Davis and Freestone), covering the Roman, Late Antique and early Islamic periods. Aspects discussed include the place of origin and production of raw glass, technology, patterns of distribution and trade, raw glass ingredients, the usage and spread of specific object groups such as gold-glass (Cesarin, Walker et al.), gems (Antonaras) or objects made of emerald green glass (Cottam and Jackson), as well as the relationship between objects made of glass and other materials. Analytical chapters focus on the chemical definition, introduction and distribution of various raw glass groups such as HIMT glass (Freestone et al.), aspects such as glass recycling (Sainsbury), the supply and trade of natron and plant ash glass in Upper Egypt (Rosenow and Rehren), and the characterisation of new plant ash glass groups in early Islamic Palestine (Phelps). We would like to thank all authors of the chapters included here as well as the other contributors to the conference for presenting their research. Further thanks are due to the British Museum, the Wallace Collection, and UCL's Institute of Archaeology for providing conference space; to UCL and the Association for the History of Glass for providing funding (grants for travel and accommodation for participants, print permissions for images); and to UCL Press. Finally, we would like to thank all those students of UCL who helped in the organisation of the conference, in particular
Ancient Glass in a Philological Context
Abstract This contribution aims to reach linguists and lexicographers as well as generalists and scholars concerned with editing, commenting on, and translating Greek and Latin texts mentioning glass. The article takes the form of eleven stand-alone numbered sections, each addressing individual passages in ancient authors, in the order described below, followed by discussions of the Greek words for glass (kua nos, lithos (khute), hualos). In particular, it proposes solutions to passages that have baffled editors of ancient texts (Hdt. 3.24; POxy. 3536); it alerts the reader to pas sages that have been reinterpreted in the light of advances in our understanding of ancient production techniques (Petr. Sat. 51; Plin. Nat. 36.193; Str. 16.2.25) or are placed in a novel context by recent archaeological research (Ar. Ach. 72-3; Ar. Nu. 768; Ath. 5.199f; Diocletian's Price Edict 16.1-9). In order to facilitate con sultation and avoid unnecessary repetition, each section addresses one single issue while providing comprehensive background for that issue. An index of citations and Greek and Latin words guides the reader to all sections in which they are discussed; a second index lists subjects relating to ancient glass and (modern) glass terminology. Keywords glass (-working), lexicography, vitrum, icuavo?, ?i&o? (x^tti), iSa?o?