ReViews: Catalog Capsule

Molten Color: Glassmaking in Antiquity

By Karol B. Wight (Los Angeles: The J. Paul Getty Museum, 2011), viii + 136 pp., $20 (paperback)

From the dishes in our cupboards to the windows in our houses and cars, we are surrounded by glass every day. Innovations such as tempered glass, bullet-proof glass and fiber-optic cable (made of extremely thin strands of glass) have made it a modern, hi-tech substance, but it is simultaneously an ancient one. Karol B. Wight, senior curator of antiquities at the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles, notes in the introduction of her book Molten Color: Glassmaking in Antiquity that “Most of us have no idea that glassmaking began over three thousand years ago or that the techniques developed over two thousand years ago to shape it into a variety of pleasing and useful forms are the same techniques that are still employed by glass artists today.”