Glass
From Sassanian Antecedents to European Imitations

Grouping the material according to the major techniques of manufacture and decoration, and then chronologically, this catalogue illustrates the development of glass-making technology from its Byzantine and Sasanian beginnings, and into the 19th and 20th-century.

The Khalili Collection contains more than 300 objects that encapsulate the history of Islamic glass from its Byzantine and Sassanian antecedents to late 19th-and early 20th-century revivals. It contains an unparalleled group of mould-blown and pattern-moulded objects - no fewer than seven of which are of the rare inscriptional type - and this wealth of material has allowed comparisons to be made between vessels from the same moulds. Other significant groups comprise vessels with relief, linear and facet-cut decoration, as well as vessels on which decoration is pincered; applied in the form of trails and medallions; cold or lustre painted; and a group of enamelled objects spanning the entire period when this technique was in fashion. Glass with scratched decoration- a category known mostly through small fragments - is represented here by four complete vessels.