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Techniques used in Ancient Egypt for glass production



 

  Egyptian Glass pieces. New Empire. Museum of El Cairo, Egypt.

The fusing of glass was a very rudimentary process. The furnaces found at Tell el-Amarna, where very simple earthenware casseroles were used for the fusing, act as element of proof. These utensils were used as a crevet and they could not be fabricated with just any type of clay, but with a material capable of withstanding temperatures high enough to fuse the elements of glass formula. Glass items were produced mostly with a technique known as “core-forming technique”, which implies the coating of a clay core with molten glass. When the layer of glass hardened, its surface was polished by heating and spinning over a flat stone, probably granite stone. Next, the piece was decorated using the trailing technique, done by applying a thin thread of glass while spinning the item. The trailed decoration had a contrasting colour and was fused under a lower temperature, creating beautiful spiral designs, which could be pulled up and down with a pointed instrument to form zigzagged lines. To form beads, a metal wire was introduced into the molten glass paste contained in the crevet. In order to achieve the desired shape, once outside the crevet it was made to spin over a flat stone as it cooled. The cold cutting technique was also used, a process for cutting a glass object from a raw block of glass. The piece was then polished with fine sand and water.

An item considered as the masterpiece of Egyptian art in glass is exhibited at the Corning Museum in the United States of America. It is the first known portrait done in glass, picturing Amenhotep II. The lost wax cast technique was used to elaborate this piece which was finished by polishing. It is worth mentioning that the Egyptians were excellent lapidaries and they applied some of these techniques to glass pieces. A relief at a tomb from the XVIII dynasty (ca. 1550 BC.) is a testimonial of this fact. It portrays two craftsmen polishing a glass piece in a turning lathe, using bands and abrasives. Details on stamps, amulets and jewelry were achieved with this method too.

Different processes were used for glass paste such as enamel to fill cavities previously hollowed in jewelry and studded decorations on wooden furniture or it was mixed and poured into moulds and then melted in furnaces until it adopted the desired shape. When the paste cooled, the mould was opened and polishing provided the finish to the piece.

Mosaic was another technique performed with great mastery; it was improved little by little until it reached its splendor in the Alexandrine era. This technique was used to imitate pink granite and other rocks.

Antique glass had always a soda base with high contents of alkali, which produced a substance with a soft texture and less resistance to wear. Before the Roman era, Egyptian glass was already famous for its elaboration techniques and above all for its colors, characteristic that made it perfect to imitate precious and semi precious stones. At the beginning, glass objects were opaque, in dark blue and turquoise colors. These colors were achieved mixing azurite for light blue and cobalt for dark blue. Black was used later, achieved by using pyrolusite, a magnesium mineral; yellow by adding antimony, arsenic sulphide, a yellowish ochre which was abundant in Egypt; dark brown was obtained from soil containing large quantities of iron oxide; green, according to Petrie, was achieved combining blue and ochre in a frit; light green was produced by adding malachite; red from iron oxide and iron hydroxide, that offers a yellowish color but changes to vermilion when heated.


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