Roman glass bottle, Jerusalem, Israel, c.300-500 AD
Glass blowing is a process that involves blowing air into red hot glass. The Roman empire used glass blowing skills to make delicate luxury items such as this flask. The colourless body and green glass decoration mark it out as something special.
Glass is naturally a blue-green colour and has to have an extra process done to it to make it clear. This type of glass was reserved for special pieces like this.
This Roman glass flask was excavated in Jerusalem, Israel. It was collected by Arthur E. Hastings Crofts of Bradford. Crofts sold his collection of Roman glassware and pottery to Hull Museums in 1925.
Romans used glass flasks to drink from and to serve drinks at the table. Fine glass vessels were also given as grave goods. Most Roman glass vessels that have survived intact have been preserved in graves.
We will never know if this particular flask is from a grave. When an incendiary bomb hit the Municipal Museum during the Second World War, all the collection records were destroyed.
Glass was plentiful in the Roman era and a revolutionary method of making it was developed. In the first century BC people discovered that molten glass could be inflated into a huge variety of shapes.
Previously glass had been restricted to small luxury items made by a casting process. This was expensive and time consuming. Suddenly glass vessels were a cheap, practical and attractive alternative to pottery and metal containers. Mass-produced glass was born.
Glassblowing probably began in Syria and spread quickly throughout the Mediterranean region. Gradually it reached northern Europe. Many areas of the Roman Empire like Britain lacked the raw materials to make glass. To solve this problem broken glass was shipped all over the Empire to be re-melted and made in vessels. The system for collecting broken glass was similar to modern bottle banks.
