ANCIENT GLASS

Classical Greece did not inspire much innovation in glassmaking. Glass products were considered a luxury until the invention of the blowpipe, apparently in Syria in the 1st century BCE, ushered in the mass production of blown glass. The most frequent forms that went on to be used for many centuries were goblets, tumblers, deep bowls, and especially pitchers and bottles of various shapes and sizes. The ancient glass in the collections of the Museum of West Bohemia in Pilsen comes from Panticapaeum. Much had been imported there from Italy and Syria – from the Levantine workshops of Sidon, the Hebron glassworks in Palestine, and Cyprus.

But the Bosporus itself was also a major centre for glass production, with the most productive workshops located in the area around Panticapaeum. The objects that have been preserved testify to the glassmakers’ excellent sense for the material and to the fact that glass had become a standard practival object. It is believed that the golden age of antique glassmaking in Bosporus was in the 1st and 2nd centuries CE. There was a downturn in production in the 3rd century, gradually halting at the turn of the 4th and 5th centuries. Extensive sets of blown glass tableware made in Campania were of such high quality, the Romans enjoyed a flourishing trade in the glass. The Publia Vestoria workshop in Puteoli was especially well-known, producing unique coloured glass in addition to standard objects. Zoomorphic and anthropomorphic forms of mould-blown vessels became popular from the 2nd century CE; evidence of wheel-ground glass, plate glass, mirrors, and glass mosaics was also found from archaeological digs in Pompeii and Herculaneum. During the Roman imperial period, production expanded beyond the Italian peninsula and into Gaul, Hispania, Britania and Germania. The workshops in the Rhineland soon gained the most renown, and by the 3rd to 4th centuries they were also producing art glass: threaded glass, reliefs, cut glass, and more. After the fall of the Roman Empire, glass art declined and the period’s popular techniques fell into oblivion. (DB)