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.
|