Throughout his career at Corning, where a four-year directorship punctuated his time as a research scientist, Brill was a forerunner in the scientific investigation of glass, glazes and colorants, developing and challenging the usefulness of emerging techniques.
The 1960s saw Brill beginning to develop the analytical techniques that would define the early years of his career at Corning, and yet the scope of his interest within glass remained vast.
The most important of these techniques would prove to be Brill's pioneering application of lead isotope analysis, hitherto used only in geology, to archaeological objects.
When discussing his motive for the experiment, Brill aptly stated: 'The truth is that the chemical analysis of glasses is a difficult undertaking and still remains in some senses an art' (1968, 49).
The results of the round robin were presented at the 'IXth International Congress on Glass' in 1971, and showed that, as Brill suspected, there was poor agreement between certain identified elements, and therefore these might be ‘troublesome’ generally across analyses (1971, 97).
Aside from their correctional potential, the results, from 45 different laboratories in 15 countries, also provided an enormous data set from which, Brill suggested, the participants could ‘evaluate their own methods and procedures against the findings of other analysts’ (1971, 97).
Brill made various trips to the Middle East, including accompanying Theodore Wertime's 1968 survey of the ancient technologies of Iran, alongside other great minds such as the noted ceramicist, Frederick Matson (UCL Institute for Archaeo-Metallurgical Studies 2007).
These stages could occur in combination at one location, or at two differing locales, and the time span of production after the initial glass melt is highly flexible.
528 of the museum's objects were damaged, the library's rare books were ruined and paper index systems, data and catalogues were all lost (Martin and Edwards 1977).
Buechner praises how Brill 'painstakingly' prepared the insurance claim that would support the museum throughout the renovation process and facilitate the replacement of many wonderful objects (1977, 7).
Under Brill's auspices, the Corning Museum of Glass was reopened just 39 days after the event, on August 1, but it would be another four years before the collection and library were restored to their former glory (Buechner 1977).
Where the melting conditions had been increasingly reducing, a ferri-sulfide chromophore complex was shown to have formed, thus changing the bluey-aqua colour of the glass to an olive, or even an amber shade (Schreurs and Brill 1984).
Brill's submissions to the XIVth International Congress on Glass, which took place in New Delhi in 1986, can be seen to represent the origins of his work on the Great Silk Road, the impressive trade route carrying goods from the East through India to Europe.
Here, chemical analysis of Early Indian glasses helped Brill determine the ingredients and techniques of production, ‘to make certain broad generalizations as to regions or periods of manufacture’, and therefore to follow an object's movement along the trade route (1987, 1).
Brill also collaborated with Mckinnon to conduct chemical analyses of some glass samples from Sumatra, Indonesia, the results of which would be the ‘first data of their kind from this island’ (1987, 1).
The results of the study, which also used samples from Java, another important location for the Silk Road, were hoped by McKinnon and Brill to ‘stimulate a greater awareness of glass in the economy [...] of ancient Sumatra and further new lines of research in the archaeology of the region’ (1987, 1).
As such, he was able to show that despite the striking similarity in the glasses’ chemical composition and appearance, the ores from which their leads were sourced must have been from very geologically-different mines (Brill, Barnes et al. 1991).
Further lead isotope analysis, this time on Chinese and central Asian pigments, was conducted with a larger team for the Getty's Conservation of Ancient Sites on the Silk Road, which saw Brill et al. launching studies that held incredible potential for understanding ‘chronological or stylistic differences among Buddhist cave paintings’, or ‘distinguish[ing] between original and repainted parts of individual works’ (1993, 371).
Brill was reluctant to publish the data without any accompanying interpretation, but he felt that the most important factor was to quickly release the material into a wider sphere, made ‘readily accessible to the scientific community’ (1999, 8).
Since 2000, Dr Brill's interest in Silk Road studies and ancient glass compositions has continued, but his publication rate has slowed somewhat.