A Shorter History of Glass

Nowadays, the hard, brittle, transparent substance called glass enters into daily life in all sorts of ways and everyone takes it for granted. However, when ancient peoples (probably first the Egyptians in around 4000 B.C.) discovered that sand and ashes, heated together, changed into a new material - glass - they thought of it as something valuable.

Since these early times craftsmen have been learning more and more about making glass and new ways of shaping it into beautiful and useful objects.

The first things the Egyptians made out of glass, using it as if it were a precious stone, were little objects like beads and amulets, which were charms to ward off evil spirits. By 1500 B.C. they had found a way of making small glass jars by winding threads of melted glass around a core of clay and sand. The core could then be crumbled up and removed as soon as the glass had set.

The next great discovery in the story of glass was probably made by the Syrians. This was the method, known as glass-blowing, of shaping the hot glass. Once this was known all sorts of new shapes could be made, and the Syrians were particularly clever at handling the soft glass, often using threads and blobs to decorate their vessels.

From about A.D. 200 the different styles came together and all parts of the Roman Empire began to make glass of the same kind. Glass was used more generally then than it ever was again until the nineteenth century. Thousands of bottles were made to hold oil, wine and other liquids and they were often square in shape for convenient storage. In the houses of rich people there were glass windows.

In the fifth century A.D., in an age of change and disturbance, the Roman Empire fell. The glass industry was scattered. In the countries of the Near East and the eastern part of the old Empire glass was still made, but only for luxury us.

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