Glassware

Glassmaking is an ancient process of melting silica, usually from sand, with an alkali to form a malleable compound that hardens on cooling. Whether discovered in one location or several, by the fifteenth century bce glass was known in Egypt and Mesopotamia and thereafter spread to the Mediterranean region and China. Various metals were often added to mimic precious stones because it was technologically impossible to make colorless glass. Drinking glasses were a luxury, made by the arduous process of dipping a core mold into molten glass. With the invention of glassblowing in Rome in the first century bce, glass vessels became more affordable and common. European glassblowing declined with the fall of Rome but was revived, most impressively, in medieval Venice.