The most adaptable material – glass

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Glass: A Short History

By David Whitehouse

What do you know about the history of glass? Yes, it’s been with us since ancient times and the skills involved are amazing, but unless you’ve taken a real interest in the subject there may be quite a few gaps in your knowledge and understanding of this most magical of materials.

One of the most interesting aspects of glass is the timelessness of so many designs, for example you could easily mistake glass objects from ancient Rome for those of later centuries. Another fascinating aspect is the sheer ingenuity of the craftsmen, experimenting to create all manner of effects – putting layers of glass together, making cameos, including gold, and much more – not to mention the time and skill it took them to engrave glass. And the cumulative knowledge and skills of glass-making have come from many nations and stylistic movements, making the development a very international story.    

The book starts with a quotation from the Natural History encyclopaedia (completed AD 78) written by Pliny the Elder, the Roman polymath, in which Pliny tells a tale – alas, an incorrect one – about how glass was discovered. It goes like this. Sailors had disembarked on the coast of what is now Lebanon from a ship carrying a cargo of the mineral natron, in order to cook a meal. When they failed to find stones suitable for supporting their cauldrons over fire they used chunks of natron from the ship instead. When these were heated and mingled with the sand on the beach a strange liquid flowed in streams, and this – it was claimed – was the origin of glass. Whitehouse ends the book by quoting Pliny again: ‘today no other material is more pliable…or adaptable than glass’. Given the use of glass in current and future technologies, and its continuing popularity as a medium for artistic expression, this is a claim that can still be taken seriously.      

The first chapter discusses the basic technology of glass, and provides a map of historic glass-making sites. Whitehouse then describes the development of glass in roughly chronological chapters, beginning in Mesopotamia with ‘Glass before glass-blowing’. He then moves on to describe the glass of ancient Rome, followed by Europe from Rome to the Renaissance, the Islamic world and Eastern Asia, the Renaissance and modern Europe, America, and modern art glass, finishing with a chapter on the future.

This is a definitive history, written by a world expert but aimed at the general reader, and it’s a wonderfully clear summary charting the entire history of glass through every historical period, with descriptions of all the principal techniques. It’s also sumptuously illustrated with many full-page images. 

All the examples are drawn from the collections of the British Museum and the Corning Museum of Glass, New York. The Corning Museum arguably holds the world’s mostcomprehensive collection of glass, with over 45,000 examples. David Whitehouse isCorning’s Senior Scholar, and his account is thus a distillation of a long acquaintance with the subject.

The book covers glass items made for practical use and for artistic expression, though many objects shown are both useful and beautiful. Whitehouse also discusses a number of glass items made to imitate other materials, though most of the examples could only have been made in glass. He rounds off his lucid discussion with a helpful glossary, and a bibliography for readers who wish to find out more. 

Glass: A Short History  by David Whitehouse is published by British Museum Press, 2012. 128pp., 120 colour illus. ISBN: 978-0-7141-5086-4