Glassblowing is a glassforming technique that involves inflating molten glass into a bubble (or parison) with the aid of a blowpipe (or blow tube). A person who blows glass is called a glassblower, glassmith, or gaffer. A lampworker (often also called a glassblower or glassworker) manipulates glass with the use of a torch on a smaller scale, such as in producing precision laboratory glassware out of borosilicate glass.
As a novel glass forming technique created in the middle of the 1st century BC, glassblowing exploited a working property of glass that was previously unknown to glassworkers; inflation, which is the expansion of a molten blob of glass by introducing a small amount of air into it. That is based on the liquid structure of glass where the atoms are held together by strong chemical bonds in a disordered and random network, therefore molten glass is viscous enough to be blown and gradually hardens as it loses heat.
To increase the stiffness of the molten glass, which in turn makes the process of blowing easier, there was a subtle change in the composition of glass. With reference to their studies of the ancient glass assemblages from Sepphoris of Israel, Fischer and McCray postulated that the concentration of natron, which acts as flux in glass, is slightly lower in blown vessels than those manufactured by casting. Lower concentration of natron would have allowed the glass to be stiffer for blowing.
During blowing, thinner layers of glass cool faster than thicker ones and become more viscous than the thicker layers. That allows production of blown glass with uniform thickness instead of causing blow-through of the thinned layers.
A full range of glassblowing techniques was developed within decades of its invention. The two major methods of glassblowing are free-blowing and mold-blowing.
This method held a pre-eminent position in glassforming ever since its introduction in the middle of the 1st century BC until the late 19th century, and is still widely used as a glassforming technique, especially for artistic purposes.
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In modern historiography, ancient Rome refers to Roman civilisation from the founding of the Italian city of Rome in the 8th century BC to the collapse of the Western Roman Empire in the 5th century AD. It encompasses the Roman Kingdom (753–509 BC), Roman Republic (509–27 BC), and Roman Empire (27 BC–476 AD) until the fall of the western empire. Ancient Rome began as an Italic settlement, traditionally dated to 753 BC, beside the River Tiber in the Italian Peninsula.
Glass art refers to individual works of art that are substantially or wholly made of glass. It ranges in size from monumental works and installation pieces to wall hangings and windows, to works of art made in studios and factories, including glass jewelry and tableware. As a decorative and functional medium, glass was extensively developed in Egypt and Assyria. Glassblowing was perhaps invented in the 1st century BC, and featured heavily in Roman glass, which was highly developed with forms such as the cage cup for a luxury market.
In classical antiquity, the Hellenistic period covers the time in Mediterranean history after Classical Greece, between the death of Alexander the Great in 323 BC to the death of Cleopatra VII (30 BC) followed by the emergence of the Roman Empire, as signified by the Battle of Actium in 31 BC and the conquest of Ptolemaic Egypt the following year. The Ancient Greek word Hellas (Ἑλλάς, Hellás) was gradually recognized as the name for Greece, from which the word Hellenistic was derived.
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