Glass - [Musée national Adrien Dubouché]

Glass

Glass is a mixture of silica (often in the form of sand) and an alkaline flux (soda or potash originally obtained from wood ash or seaweed). It seems to have come from Egypt or Syria and then been developed by the Romans. It continued to be used during the Middle Ages but during the XIVth century Venetian glassmakers mastered the material to an astonishing degree and began exporting throughout Europe. The XVIth and XVIIth centuries saw improvements in the art of glassmaking, most notably the replacement of a soda or potash flux by lead oxides to produce crystal glass.

A large range of glassware covering European production from the XVth to XXth centuries may be seen at the National Porcelain Museum in Limoges based on an initial 200 objects from the Gasnault collection originally donated by Adrien Dubouché. Among the exhibits may be seen examples of XIXth century pâte de verre glass, a technique involving grinding down glass and refiring it in a mould.