Five Thousand Years Of Glass

A complete history of glass from its origins 5000 years ago to mechanized processes for its production in the twentieth century.

A new edition of this definitive world history of glassmaking and decorative techniques from 2500 BC, updated to cover the first decade of the 21st century. This classic book traces the history of glassmaking from its origins in Western Asia some 5000 years ago, through the invention of glassblowing around the first century BC, to the introduction of mechanised processes and new styles in the 19th and 20th centuries. It highlights the flourishing industries of ancient Mesopotamia and Egypt, the extraordinary achievements of the Roman Empire, the elegant vessels of the Islamic Near East, the superb mastery of Renaissance Venice and the wide‐ranging experiments of modern Europe and America. With a new final chapter by John P. Smith, Editor of The Glass Circle journal, to bring the book right up to date with the latest developments, 5000 Years of Glass is still the definitive single‐volume general history of this most versatile art form.

This volume explores glass composition and production from the mid-second to mid-first millennia BC, the first thousand years of glass-making. Multi-element analyses of 132 glasses from Pella in Jordan, and Nuzi and Nimrud in Iraq (ancient Mesopotamia) produce new and important data that provide insights into the earliest glass production.

You are what you own. So believed many of the elite men and women of Renaissance Italy. The notion that a person's belongings transmit something about their personal history, status, and "character" was renewed in the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. Objects of Virtue explores the multiple meanings and values of the objects with which families like the Medici, Este, and Gonzaga surrounded themselves. This lavishly illustrated volume examines the complicated relationships between the so-called "fine arts"--painting and sculpture--and artifacts of other kinds for which artistry might be as important as utility-furniture, jewelry, and vessels made of gold, silver, and bronze, precious and semi-precious stone, glass, and ceramic. The works discussed were designed and made by artists as famous as Andrea Mantegna, Raphael, and Michelangelo, as well as by lesser-known specialists--goldsmiths, gem-engravers, glassmakers, and maiolica painters.

Following the tradition and style of the acclaimed Index Islamicus, the editors have created this new Bibliography of Art and Architecture in the Islamic World. The editors have surveyed and annotated a wide range of books and articles from collected volumes and journals published in all European languages (except Turkish) between 1906 and 2011. This comprehensive bibliography is an indispensable tool for everyone involved in the study of material culture in Muslim societies.

The 17th congress of the Association Internationale pour l'Histoire du Verre (AIHV), held in Antwerp, Belgium from 4 to 8 September 2006, brought together scholars from all over the world specialized in the history of glass. AIHV is an international organisation whose membership spans the globe, from Los Angeles to Tokyo and from Helsinki to Adelaide. Since its creation 50 years ago, AIHV members have studied and reported on the extraordinary development of glass in all historical periods in the Annales of the AIHV. Next to containing numerous contributions on the use, manufacture and trade of glass in the Antique period, also the importance of glass in more recent historical periods, starting from the 15th century and ending in the 21st century, are dealt with in detail. Additionally, apart from contributions on stained glass, on glass decoration and the use of enamelling, a substantial series of papers dealing with the chemical analysis of glass form part of this proceedings volume. --Book Jacket.