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Colored-glass Picture Panels: A joint Chicago-Indiana University expedition in 1967 made a significant find pertaining to the civilization of ancient Greece. At Kenchreai-Corinth the expedition discovered approximately 100 colored-glass picture panels in a harbor-front building that had been buried under water. The panels were found piled in stacks, as though they had not yet been installed in their final places. Ancient Greek, Egyptian, and early Christian themes were depicted on the panels.
The various types of glass are: lime, from which plate and window glass, hollow ware—such as tumblers, containers, bottles, bowls—inexpensive novelties, and most light bulbs are made; lead, from which insulators, electronic, radio and television tubes, crystal glassware, and certain optical lenses and prisms are made; borosilicate, from which cooking ware, pipe lines, Mirror disks —including the 200-inch disk in the Hale telescope at Palomar Mountain, Calif.—are made; 96 per cent silica, sometimes described as the "only new method in five thousand years of glassmaking," from which flame-resistant glass is made; optical, used primarily in the production of lenses and prisms; colored, used for the manufacture of signal lights, colored tableware, and various kinds of drinking glasses and containers; opal, used in making Lighting globes, tableware, cosmetic jars, containers, and decorative building panels.
In Rome quantities of small useful wares selling for as little as a penny were owned by the populace, while wealthy patricians prided themselves on their fine glass.
Strabo, the Greek geographer (63 B.C. ?-?24 A.D.) commented on the number of glass factories in Rome. Marcus Annaeus Seneca (54 B.C. ?-39 A.D.) wrote of the skill of glassworkers and on the vogue for glass collecting. He regretted that he could not afford a glass room decorated with tiles and mosaic panels of glass. |
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