Hellenistic glass
[10] This was the first time that glass vessels were widely consumed by the broader public as a widespread commodity, something that continued ever since and was achieved in a higher degree with the invention of the even more economical glassblowing technique.
Gold sandwich glass vessels and gold-band alabastra were innovations of the late Hellenistic period addressed to a more limited range of wealthy customers.
[14] Inlays were produced to decorate wooden articles, furniture, chests, sarcophagi and jewellery in combination with other, often precious materials, such as gold leaf or ivory.
[16] Inlays were deeply rooted in the Egyptian glassmaking industry and their production, with the mosaic technique after the Pharaonic tradition, continued to flourish during the Hellenistic period with old or new repertories inspired from the Greek world.
[21] Raw glass was traded throughout the Mediterranean in the form of ingots (Stern 1999) and it was then worked and shaped into vessels, inlays, jewellery, etc., in numerous sites of the Hellenistic world.
Major glassworking centres were located at the Syro-Palestinian coast, e.g. monochrome hemispherical bowls, and in Alexandria, since its foundation in 332 BC, e.g. mosaic glass vessels and inlays.
[25] The reputation of the Alexandrian workshop is well understood from luxury glass vessels decorated with Egyptian-style buildings or characteristic scenes found as far as Italy and Afghanistan or, even, produced there (Auth 2001).
Glass vessels, both core-formed and mould-press, were also made in Ionia, Cyprus, Sidon, the Levant, Tel Anafa in Upper Galilee, Rome and Roman Italy, Crete, Macedonia.
[26] Particularly interesting is the core-formed vessels’ trade and spatial distribution, since this was the group produced throughout the Hellenistic period from its very beginning to the invention of glassblowing (c. 50 BC).
Core-formed bottles, along with other types of glass vessels, are found throughout the Mediterranean in the Aegean (e.g. Delos, Crete, Athens), throughout Greece, Asia Minor and western Asia (e.g. Ephesus, Sardis, Dura-Europos, Babylon, Nimrud, Nineveh, the Levant, Phoenicia), Magna Graecia (e.g. Rhegium, Morgantina) and Italy, Mesopotamia, the Balkans, Russia, the transalpine lands, Spain (Emporion) and the Balearics, northern Africa (Carthage) and Cerne on the Atlantic coast of Africa.
