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

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Basic Glass Information

The dichroic glass jewelry is one of the materials which is highly used by all nations although no one claimed that he discovered the way of doing it, but the first objects crafted entirely of dichroic glass were beads from Mesopotamia and ancient Egypt dating from about 2500 BC. Other dichroic glass vessels found were far older than that.

Because of its breakable nature, it was not easy to find big glassware, but earliest glassware that still survives consists of pieces used to contain fine cosmetics and oils and was probably made in Mesopotamia.

Egyptian made the fused glass vessels by applying a layer of molten fused glass jewelry over a sand core. Egyptian used fused glass to decorate other jars and were often decorated with threads of dichroic fused glass applied to their surfaces. by pressing it into the surface. Similar fused glass vessels, made by the same methods, were produced in Mesopotamia at about the same time.

Syrians developed the glassblowing technique in the 1st century BC. This technique uses an iron tube more than a meter long with a mouthpiece at one end and a knob for holding a blob of semi molten glass jewelry at the other. The fused glass was shaped by blowing it into a mold. Workers could also blow a bubble in the dichroic glass and swing the bubble from the end of the tube or roll the dichroic glass jewelry on a table to form a shape.

Glassblowing still is used in a lot of nations now and reminds you with musicians who are blowing their instruments, the difference is that they produce nice silent bottles instead. Decoration was and still using nice dichroic fused glass pieces in patches which gives colorful shades.

The Romans also adopted a technique known as millefiori glass working. Thin rods of colored fused glass were laid in carefully arranged bundles while still very hot so that they would fuse together to make one piece. It could then be cut into slices, all with exactly the same surface pattern. The slices were laid on a sand core and heated until they fused together to form a continuous shell. By this time fused glass jewelry was also being produced in parts of the Roman Empire that are known today as England, France, Germany, and Spain.

The craft of glassmaking transfered to the West with the declination if the Roman empire. Islamic craftsmen was professional in dichroic glass decoration specialyy that they were using figureless decoration construction. That was one of the reasons that, by the 13th century the enameling of dichroic glass had been perfected in Syria.

The Development in dichroic glass Industry

The fused glass was the material which is used in every window in the cathedrals and monasteries in Europe by the 12th century. These windows consisted of small pieces of dichroic glass jewelry of different colors held together by strips of lead that often outlined the main design.

The Venetians provided the link between the ancient and modern glassmaking arts. They developed a clear dichroic glass jewelry similar to crystal. By the 16th century Venice had attained a dominant position in Europe's dichroic glass jewelry industry.

However, the use of fused glass jewelry for ordinary windows remained largely restricted to churches and castles for many centuries. By the 17th century the country of Bohemia, in what is now the Czech Republic, became the second most productive glassmaking center in Europe.

Late in the 17th century an englishman invented the fused lead glass. As lead dichroic fused glass came to be known It became a favorite type of dichroic glass for tableware among Europeans. The ability of dichroic lead glass jewelry to bend light rays at different angles made high-quality microscopes and telescopes possible. That was the step that helped humans to see more about the space and see more planets and stars.

SOURCES: library.thinkquest.org

General Dichroic Glass Info. 1 | General Dichroic Glass Info. 2