Mosaic Bowls!

I promised you all a post about mosaic bowls and....here it is!

This is what I am talking about....

Roman mosaic bowl, circa 1st c. AD

The Corning Museum of Glass

This is an example of a Roman or Hellenistic mosaic bowl. It was constructed by preparing canesof glass, long rods with designs layered in them. These canes were sliced into small pieces, revealing the layers of colored glass, and the slices were placed side by side to form the initial shape of the bowl.

Some say the bowl was formed by placing the cane slices into the bottom of a two-part mold, replacing the top of the mold, then firing to fuse the slices.

Other researchers feel that evidence supports the fusing of the cane elements into a flat disk, with the striped rim applied while the glass is hot, then slumping the disk over a convex ceramic form, thus forming the bowl.

Personally, I'm inclined to believe the latter hypothesis. Having worked with cane slices before, I find it difficult to believe that numerous slices would be placed in a mold and would stay securely while the top of the mold was put in place and fired. Those little slices of glass would be moving all over the place, unless some kind of wash or preparation was applied to stick them in place. The problem with that, in my opinion, is that whatever was used to stick them in place could contaminate the work. It seems like a whole lot of effort to go through when a simpler solution is technologically available. It's a much much simpler process to lay the cane flat on a kiln shelf, and fuse the entire thing, then slump it over something to the desired shape. This way, the ribbon edge can be hand-applied in the heat of the kiln while the disk is flat, making it much more uniform.

Here are a couple of other examples of extant bowls:

(all photos taken by me at The Corning Museum of Glass, October 2010)

Similar to the mosaic bowls are what are termed 'ribbon bowls'. They are made form long slices of cane, as opposed to the short chunks as the previous examples. The construction method is the same: sticks of glass are laid side by side, cut to length to make the desired round shape. The disk is fused and the ribbon rim is applied. The disk is then slumped over a mold to make the bowl shape. Here are some examples:

I hope this post has proved informative and interesting. Roman and Hellenistic glass is beautiful, functional, and technologically advanced, and very much worthy of scholarly attention.

Some good resources on the subject include the following:

Roman Glassmakers: http://www.romanglassmakers.co.uk/mosaics.htm

Roman Glass in the Corning Museum of Glass: http://www.amazon.com/Roman-Glass-Corning-Museum-III/dp/0872901556

The Metropolitan Museum of Art: http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/rgls/hd_rgls.htm

The Yale Museum

I want to direct your attention to a fantastic resource on the web for ancient art, including plenty of ancient glass. It is the Yale University Art Gallery, and it is located, obviously, at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut. I've never actually been there, although it's on my list of To-Visit Museums, but I have utilized their online resources, image gallery, and downloadable guide.

Their Ancient Glass: Guide to the Yale Collection is available here, and contains some excellent images and information about glasswork and artifacts in their collection.

I'll be back later this week with a post about mosaic bowls!

Grave Goods and Rituals

I had to attend a family funeral last week, and as I attended the various services and family functions, I was reminded how the rituals involved with funeral practices in modern times have parallels in early history.

In the pre-Christian era, it was customary to place worldly goods alongside the body of the deceased as he or she was buried. This practice extends back to Egyptian pharoahs and ancient times, as well as into the Medieval period. Sending your loved one from this earthly world into the next (whatever place your belief system thought that might be) without that individual's belongings was unthinkable. A warrior needed his weapons, the deceased must have clothing and their items of personal adornment to be presentable in the next life, and everyone had to have valuables and coin to pay Charon for the trip. It's because of these types of burials that we have some of the artifacts from the earliest periods of history.

For example, look at this picture of grave goods found in a late Roman burial in Boscombe Down, Wiltshire, Wessex. Two glass vessels were found among the objects in the grave, and they are intact. Much more recently, a Roman mosaic bowl was found, not intact, but entirely restorable with all its pieces. In the Merovingian culture, burial with goods was common, and we see glass vessels placed at the feet of the deceased, sometimes with food or liquids inside. In fact, the Merovingians were notorious for rich collections of grave goods, and many of the burial sites included glass vessels. Historians are thrilled to be able to find intact glass objects in this manner. Later-period people did not have so much focus on interring goods with the deceased, and so even though glass became more common and its use more widespread over the centuries, we have far fewer intact or whole examples. Glass breaks!

Of course, in addition to vessels, people were buried with other glass objects, most commonly glass beads. As in this find, often the number and type of glass beads is stunning.

The Pagan Lady's Necklace circa 950AD

found on the Isle of Man in 1984

glass and stone beads

photo: Manx National Heritage

Most of what we know about early glass use is because of burial sites unearthed in modern times. I always find it interesting as to what was chosen to be placed with a society's dead.

As I recall the funeral I just attended, in which photographs, a rosary, some jewelry, and other items of personal significance were placed in the casket of my family member, I think about why we still do that in this day and age. These days, in my family, we don't really believe that coins are needed to pay Charon, or that my beloved uncle will use the rosary or need his wedding ring or look at the photographs, but we do it because we want to acknowledge the significance of his life. I believe that people throughout history wanted to make that acknowledgement for their dead as well, which is why we find so many interesting things among the deceased members of ancient societies. It helps us feel as though we are 'doing something' in the face of a terrible event -- and that desire is basic human nature, no matter the century.