Art Institute of Chicago

Fragment of an Inlay

Ancient Egyptian

3rd century BCE/1st century CE

Attribution

Egyptian

Medium

Glass, mosaic technique

Physical dimensions

6.4 × 1.6 × 0.3 cm (2 1/2 × 5/8 × 1/8 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