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.
Early glassmaking in the United States
The glassmaking business in the United States started when eight Germans (known as "Dutchmen") and Poles arrived as part of the Second supply on board the "Mary and Margaret". They used local material: sand in the James River, potash was in the forest and a bed of endless oyster shells which could be burned and ground to make lime. They set up making the first batches of goods exported to England from the New World. The first shipment sent to England was called the trial glass. Most of it was window glass, bottles, vials and plain drinking glasses. The glass factory at Jamestown was believed to be the first manufactory in the United States.