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THE LAMPS OF TIFFANY:

Highlights from the Neustadt Collection

      GLASS IN HISTORY AND CULTURE     

Evolution of the Forms and Functions of Glass

The first glass was probably made about 2500 before the Common Era, or B.C.E., by the Mesopotamians, the people who lived in what is today Iraq.  It is uncertain how they discovered glass, but some people speculate that glass might have been created accidentally when fires were built on a beach or another sandy surface, perhaps made up of a substance called silica. Mesopotamians learned to make glass in a variety of colors, but they only made small items such as beads. 

A thousand years later (around 1500 B.C.E.), Egyptians, who were already familiar with silica as a preserving agent in the mummification process, began creating glass.  They were able to create a variety of glass objects, including jewelry (such as the bracelet on display among Albany Institute of History and Art’s Egyptian artifacts). Egyptians were probably the first people to create glass vessels such as bottles, and this was a long and difficult process.  A glassmaker would create a “core” of sand or clay and put it on the end of an iron rod.  Then he would dip the rod and core into the melted glass to cover it, remove it to let it cool, and roll it to make a smooth surface.  This process would be repeated several times so that each additional thin layer of glass could adhere to the other glass in order to create a stronger vessel.  When the finished bottle had cooled, the glassmaker carefully scratched out the sand and clay core inside the bottle.[1] 

Creating such vessels became much easier when the Romans began blowing glass around 50 B.C.E.  Instead of using a rod, glassblowers used a hollow pipe through which they could literally blow into the glass in much the same way you might blow a balloon or a bubble.  To give the glass a distinct form, the glassblower might place the glass bubble into a mold so that the glass would assume a particular shape. He would allow the glass to cool a bit, then open the mold.[2] 

After the fall of Rome in the late fifth century, glass innovations slowed in Europe, but glassmaking began to flourish in the Middle East among Islamic people about two centuries later.  Islamic glassmakers are best known for adding various materials to glass for artistic effects.  For example, they created glass-based paints called enamels which they used to decorate glass surfaces.  They also painted glass with oil and silver, copper, or gold, then heated the pieces to create what was probably the first lustrous glass.[3]

Leaded stained glass began to appear in Medieval times, between about 700 and 1300.  The first stained glass evolved from an earlier art form, the mosaic.  Artists created decorative floor mosaics by setting stones, tiles, and later glass and jewels, in mortar to create patterns and designs.  These designs moved to walls and windows, and soon glass pieces were joined by relatively thin strips of leading to allow more light to pass through the glass creations.  In order to create stained glass, workers first made flat glass by blowing a cylinder, then cutting, opening, and gently flattening the glass while it was still hot and pliable.  Based on a drawing or cartoon, different colors of flat glass were cut into pieces like a puzzle and soldered together using strips of lead.[4] 

During the Renaissance, Italy became famous for its glassmaking.  Skilled artists in Venice created high-quality glassware and integrated enameling and jewels into their glass.  They also created mirrors by putting a silver backing on a sheet of glass.  Meanwhile, Italian glassmakers realized that convex pieces of glass refracts (bends) light and thus magnifies objects. This optical glass had a critical impact on history, since scholars were suddenly able to continue reading and writing even into old age.  By the 1600s optical glass was being used to create microscopes and telescopes, allowing scholars to discover the cells inside the human body and the moons around Jupiter.

Later innovations include many types of glass that we use in our daily life.  In the seventeenth century, French glassmakers developed a method for creating plate glass by pouring glass onto a metal sheet.  This long flat glass that could be used for windows and was much less time consuming to produce than the flat glass that was used, for example, in leaded stained glass.   The Corning Glass Works, in Corning, New York, invented a machine specifically for blowing light bulbs in 1922.  In 1932, a worker at the Owens-Illinois glass company accidentally hit molten glass with a gust of compressed air and created short, fine fibers.  This led to the development of fiberglass, which is used today in the bodies of cars and boats. 

Another critical modern application of glassmaking is fiber optics.  Scientists have known since the 1840s that glass rods can transmit light.  Light travels in a straight line  unless it hits another less dense surface.  Light that travels within a glass rod travels forward, bouncing along the interior surface of the glass fiber, in much the same way that water flows through a pipe.[5]  Over roughly the next hundred years, several innovations allowed us to harness this power.  First, scientists began to bundle many glass fibers together in 1930.  These bundles were strengthened in the 1950s when scientists began coating each glass fiber with plastic. Today these optical glass fibers are thinner than a human hair, and they are used to carry information, transmitting it via rapidly pulsing lasers.  Fiber optics allows us to communicate with people all over the phone via telephone, video, and computer.

Glass and Culture

Glass itself, for many people, is almost mystical.  It certainly inspires passionate artistic expressions in jewelry, windows, lamps, vases, and goblets.  But in addition, it is often viewed as somewhat otherworldly.  In the middle ages, the streams of colored light that pierced a cathedral’s stained glass windows functioned as a physical manifestation of a spiritual idea:  that through the Church, humans were being touched by God in all of His heavenly power.  Abott Suger,  the 12^th century abbot whose Abbey Church of Saint Denis, near Paris, is considered the first gothic church and a model of the use of stained glass in ecclesiastical architecture, said that upon entering the church, “I see myself dwelling, as it were, in some strange region of the universe which neither exists entirely in the slime of the earth, nor entirely in the purity of Heaven; and that, by the grace of God, I can be transported from this inferior to the higher world.”[6]

While glass itself is inspiring, the dramatic transformation which is part of creating glass out of sand has long influenced peoples’ ideas, including widespread notions that it has a magical nature. Even today, people observing the process of glassmaking cannot help but be astonished as sand, ashes, and lime are transformed into brilliant, light-filled orbs of glass that come alive with the breath of a glassblower.  Imagine how the earliest glassmakers must have reacted to this process:  it must have seemed like magic.  Over the years, people have used glass for its supposed magical properties, such as looking into crystal balls in order to see the future.   Glass balls, sometimes called witches’ balls, were often kept in homes as talismans against evil, and you can view an example of a witches’ ball at the Albany Institute’s Museum Explorers Gallery off the main lobby.  The magical nature of glass appears in many stories.  When her fairy godmother transformed Cinderella, she fitted her with glass slippers.  Alice entered the Wonderland via a magic mirror, and more recently Harry Potter saw his greatest wish in a bewitched mirror. 

The Lamps of Tiffany

• Art Glass in America's Gilded Age

• Tiffany and Nature

• Working in Tiffany's Glassmaking Factory

• Glass in History and Culture

• The Science of Glass

• Glossary

• Activities

• Web Resources

• Bibliography