Feature Exhibition:

The Colorful World of Ancient Glass
An Okayama Orient Museum Collection Showcase

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Exhibition Overview and Highlights

Prologue: Through the Looking Glass

Before delving into the multicolored glass creations of the ancient world, let us first transport ourselves to the western end of the Asian continent, five thousand years in the past. We find ourselves in Mesopotamia, a region located between the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers where the world’s oldest civilizations were born. Meanwhile, to its west, the pharaohs of Egypt were consolidating power in northern Africa. People in these two regions interacted and traded frequently, and their rich cultures and beliefs, as well as the influences they received from one another, are reflected in their material culture. Some of these objects even made their way to Japan via the Silk Road. In opening this exhibition with a selection of non-glass objects, we hope to contextualize the development of glass by presenting an overview of material cultures in the ancient West Asian and Egyptian regions.

Part 1: Before the Dawn of Glass

The people of ancient West Asia favored naturally occurring stones like lapis lazuli and marble for their beautiful colors and patterns. These prized stones were generally owned only by the powerful due to their rarity. Around the forty-fifth century BCE, the Mesopotamian region developed a kind of ceramic ware that took on a glass-like finish when fired. These products, most of which were light blue or green, were immensely popular in Egypt, and are known today as “Egyptian faience.” Glazes—coatings that turn into a glassy, waterproof layer when applied to ceramic and fired—were also in use at that time, but did not fuse well with the clay of the region. Their uses were thus limited to decorative wall tiles and small jars for holding precious liquids.

Part 2: Glass in the Early Days

Glass was first used as an independent material for making items around 2200 BCE. This first began in Mesopotamia, and later spread to neighboring cultures in Egypt and the rest of West Asia, including the Mediterranean region. These early glass products were treated as substitutes for precious stone ones, as their creators went to great lengths to mimic the vibrant color of turquoise and intricate patterns on natural marble. Around the same time, people had also managed to make vessels out of glass, but this required such technical sophistication that it took extreme effort to create even the smallest ones.

Part 3: The Evolution of Glass Production

The Mediterranean region was the main production center of glass around the late first millennium BCE. Its artisans experimented on designs and techniques to create regional variants that catered to consumer demands. What had begun as an industry for the imitation of natural stone later reached its peak during the two centuries from the second century BCE up to the Hellenistic period, when its products took on imaginative designs not found in the natural world. These included gradients, detailed mosaics, and even face-shaped forms, all of which were made possible by the creators’ skillful manipulation of the unique properties of glass.

Part 4: The Advent of Glassblowing

Around the first century BCE, a glass workshop in a nameless corner of the eastern Mediterranean region invented a technique that would change the history of glassmaking forever: glassblowing. This technique involves sticking a small piece of molten glass to one end of a blowpipe and blowing into the other end to inflate the glass. This allowed for new innovations in creating both vessels and decorative glass ornaments, changing the way people made and viewed glass. Products ranged from daily objects to luxury items, and eventually became commodities traded all over the world following the rise of the Roman Empire. The technique of glassblowing has remained almost unchanged since then, and is still in use today.

Part 5: The Growing World of Glass

The Sasanian Empire, which flourished in the third to sixth century in present-day Iran, is famous for their cut glass products. Striking for how their distinct forms scatter light, Sasanian cut glass became precious commodities that traveled the world via trade routes, including the Silk Road. Some of them even ended up in lands as distant as Japan.
After the Islamic religion and culture took root in West Asia around the ninth century, glass production split into two distinct trends: highly decorated objects of luxury, and simple forms created for everyday use. As glassmakers refined methods for creating transparent glass, the industry experienced a boom. Luxury glass articles developed into European glass crafts, while simpler everyday glass objects followed humanity into modern day. We can thus see how Islamic glass products spread all over the world, and formed the basis for modern-day glassmaking industries.

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