Art Institute of Chicago

Fragment of a Bowl

Ancient Roman

1st century BCE–1st century CE

Attribution

Roman

Medium

Glass, mosaic glass technique

Physical dimensions

3.8 × 5.7 × 1 cm (1 1/2 × 2 1/4 × 3/8 in.)

Credit line

Gift of Theodore W. and Frances S. Robinson

From the museum

In ancient Rome, there was a high demand for colorful glass that could dazzle banquet guests alongside the expensive silver and gold serving wares meant to impress. Fragments like this one would have once been a part of larger mosaic dishes. The mosaic pattern was made by sagging molten glass into bowl-shaped molds, a technique used on many of these fragments is similar to millefiori, “thousand flowers” in Italian, a modern glass-making method in which tiny rods of colored glass are bundled together, wrapped in a sheet of glass, fused, and then thinly sliced to reveal swirls of a flower-like patterns. They were arranged side by side, sometimes together with bits of colored glass, and fused together with heat.

Description: Art Institute of Chicago · CC BY 4.0