Art Institute of Chicago

Fragment of an Inlay

Roman

Date

1st century BCE–1st century CE

Medium

Glass, mosaic glass technique

Culture

Italy

Department

Arts of Greece, Rome, and Byzantium

Institution

Art Institute of Chicago

In ancient Rome, there was a high demand for colorful glass that could dazzle banquet guests alongside the expensive silver and gold serving wares meant to impress. Fragments like this one would have once been a part of larger mosaic dishes. The mosaic pattern was made by sagging molten glass into bowl-shaped molds, a technique used on many of these fragments is similar to millefiori, “thousand flowers” in Italian, a modern glass-making method in which tiny rods of colored glass are bundled together, wrapped in a sheet of glass, fused, and then thinly sliced to reveal swirls of a flower-like patterns. They were arranged side by side, sometimes together with bits of colored glass, and fused together with heat.

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