Glass facts

The origins of glass date back over 3000 years to the Phoenician and Egyptian empires. But was the Romans that developed its use in windows, this art was lost for century's in Europe until around 1000 AD. It is around this date that the art of painting on glass (staining) was developed.

The general principals have changed little since, specialist companies still employ these skills handed down over the years to produce a wide range of colours and textures of glass which are called "antique". The process involves bowing a bubble of glass into a tube , slicing off both ends. The resulting tube is then cut along its length and allowed to uncurl into a sheet. This results in an irregular sheet of glass with a beautiful mixture of colour and texture.

Adding different metal oxides to the molten glass will result in a wide range of colours reds blues, yellows and greens are all the results of differing oxides. Old glass tended to be greenish in colour because of iron oxides left in the sand and the flux materials and until the late 18 th century most "clear" glass was green tinted.

Modern "machine" glass has inherited its range of colours form the past but mostly uses a rolling technique to produce a uniform thickness. The rollers can also be used to produce a pattern on the surface and this type of glass is called "cathedral". Some manufactures deliberately put faults and air bubbles called seeds, back in there products to give an antique appearance.

This all makes for a wide variety of different colours, seeds and variability to choose from. Hand made glass is expensive and none uniform while the cheaper machine glass has a wide variety of colours and patterns.