History of glass
Glass remained a luxury material, and the disasters that overtook Late Bronze Age civilizations seem to have brought glass-making to a halt. It picked up again in its former sites, Syria and Cyprus, in the 9th century BC, when the techniques for making colorless glass were discovered. The first glassmaking "manual" dates back to ca. 650 BC. Instructions on how to make glass are contained in cuneiform tablets discovered in the library of the Assyrian king Ashurbanipal. In Egypt glass-making did not revive until it was reintroduced in Ptolemaic Alexandria. Core-formed vessels and beads were still widely produced, but other techniques came to the fore with experimentation and technological advancements. During the Hellenistic period many new techniques of glass production were introduced and glass began to be used to make larger pieces, notably table wares. Techniques developed during this period include 'slumping' viscous (but not fully molten) glass over a mould in order to form a dish and 'millefiori' (meaning 'thousand flowers') technique, where canes of multicolored glass were sliced and the slices arranged together and fused in a mould to create a mosaic-like effect. It was also during this period that colorless or decolored glass began to be prized and methods for achieving this effect were investigated more fully.
New Bedford Museum of Glass
The Museum's collection numbers more than 7,000 items. The earliest example of glass on display is a core-formed vessel of eastern Mediterranean origin dating from 600 BCE. European glass includes a diamond-engraved wine glass of about 1690, an English seal bottle dated 1785, a glass portrait medallion of about 1813 representing Arthur Wellesley, the First Duke of Wellington, by English artist John Henning, and numerous other examples. Early American glass is particularly well represented in the museum galleries. The collection includes outstanding examples by the Boston and Sandwich Glass Company, the New England Glass Company, Thomas Cains' Phoenix Glass Works of South Boston, Bakewell, Page and Bakewell of Pittsburgh and many other celebrated makers. Examples of New Bedford glass include Mount Washington's Amberina, Burmese, Crown Milano, Lava Glass, Peach Blow, and Royal Flemish art glass and Pairpoint engraved pieces. Contemporary artists include Dale Chihuly, Edris Eckhardt, and Harvey Littleton. The Museum's collection of American political glass, featured in a special installation at the New Bedford City Hall, is the largest of its kind on public display, numbering more than 500 items. Popular permanent exhibits in the museum galleries include "Contemporary Paperweights: The Schimmelpfeng Collection" and "Atomic Green Vaseline: Uranium Glass in Everyday Life." Another important resource at the Museum is the Virginia Shaw Rockwell Research Library, which contains more than 6,000 publications on the subject of glass.