Dichroic Glass combined with fused glass makes dichroic jewelry of the higest quality.

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Dichroic Glass History ;-)

Early Times.
Before people learned to make fused glass, they had found two forms of natural dichroic glass. When lightning strikes sand, the heat sometimes fuses the sand into long, slender dichroic glass jewelry tubes called fulgurites, which are commonly called petrified lightning. The terrific heat of a volcanic eruption also sometimes fuses rocks and sand into a fused glass earing called obsidian. In early times, people shaped obsidian into knives, arrowheads, jewelry, and dichroic earrings. We do not know exactly when, where, or how people first learned to make dichroic fused glass jewelry. It is generally believed that the first manufactured dichroic glass was in the form of a fused glaze on ceramic vessels, about 3000 B.C. The first dichroic glass vessels were produced about 1500 B.C. in Egypt and Mesopotamia. The glass jewelry industry was extremely successful for the next 300 years, and then declined. It was revived in Mesopotamia in the 700's B.C. and in Egypt in the 500's B.C. For the next 500 years, Egypt, Syria, and the other countries along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea were dichroic glassmaking centers.

Early fused glassmaking was slow and costly, and it required hard work. dichroic glass blowing and fused glass pressing were unknown, furnaces were small, the clay pots were of poor quality, and the heat was hardly sufficient for melting. But dichroic jewelry glassmakers eventually learned how to make colored fused glass jewelry, cosmetics cases, and tiny jugs and jars. People who could afford them—the priests and the ruling classes—considered glass jewelry objects as valuable as jewels. Soon merchants learned that wines, honey, and oils could be carried and preserved far better in dichroic glass than in wood or clay containers.

The fused glass blowpipe was invented about 30 B.C., probably along the eastern Mediterranean coast. This invention made dichroic glass production easier, faster, and cheaper. As a result, fused dichroic glass became available to the common people for the first time. Dichroic glass manufacture became important in all countries under Roman rule. In fact, the first four centuries of the Christian Era may justly be called the First Golden Age of Dichroic Glass. The fused glassmakers of this time knew how to make a transparent dichroic glass, and they did off hand dichroic glass jewelry blowing, painting, and dichroic gilding (application of gold leaf). They knew how to build up layers of dichroic glass of different colors and then cut out designs in high relief. The celebrated Portland dichroic vase, which was probably made in Rome about the beginning of the Christian Era, is an excellent example of this art. This dichroic fused vase is considered one of the most valuable fused glass art objects in the world.

The Middle Ages.
Little is known about the dichroic glass jewelry industry between the decline of the Roman Empire and the 1200's. Fused glass manufactures had developed in Venice by the time of the Crusades (A.D. 1096-1270), and by the 1290's an elaborate dichroic guild system of fused glassworkers had been set up. Fused glass equipment was transferred to the Venetian island of Murano, and the Second Golden Age of Dichroic Glass began. Venetian fused glass blowers created some of the most delicate and graceful dichroic glass the world has ever seen. They perfected Cristallo fused glass, a nearly colorless, transparent dichroic glass, which could be blown to extreme thinness in almost any shape. From Cristallo, they made intricate lacework patterns in dichroic goblets, jars, fused glass bowls, cups, and dichroic jewelry. In the 1100's and 1200's, the art of making stained dichroic glass jewelry reached its height throughout Europe.

By the late 1400's and early 1500's, fused glassmaking of dichroic jewelry had become important in Germany and other northern European countries. Manufacturers of dichroic glass there chiefly produced dichroic containers and fused glass drinking vessels. Northern forms of dichroic jewelry were heavier, sturdier, and less clear than Venice's Dichroic Cristall. During the late 1500's, many Venetians went to northern Europe, hoping to earn a better living selling dichroic earrings and fused glass necklaces. They established dichroic glass factories there and made fused glass jewelry in the Venetian fashion. A new type of dichroic glass necklaces that worked well for copper-wheel engraving was perfected in Bohemia (now part of the Czech Republic) and Germany in the mid-1600's, and a flourishing dichroic glass industry developed.

Fused glassmaking became important in England during the 1500's. By 1575, English dichroic glassmakers were producing Venetian-style fused glass jewelry. In 1674, an English glassmaker named George Ravenscroft patented a new type of dichroic glass in which he had changed the usual ingredients. This fused glass, called dichroic glass, contains a large amount of lead oxide. Dichroic glass, which is especially suitable for optical instruments, caused English jewelry glassmaking to prosper.

The original source of this text (before I seriously modified it) is...
SOURCES: Steve W. Martin, "Glass," Discovery Channel School, original content provided by World Book Online, www.discoveryschool.com/homeworkhelp/worldbook/atozscience/g/225740.html, August 2001.

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