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Advancing the Craft
The glassworkers of
northern Italy used the robustness of the iron blow-pipe to
particularly good effect during the second quarter of the
1st century A.D. to produce a range of small, colorful bowls
with a distinctive pinched-rib finish. Some glass of the ground
color-usually amber or purple-was gathered up while hot, and
several threads of white glass were wound about it. Reheating
this mass softened it sufficiently so that, as it was rolled
on a flat wooden slab, the white glass was pressed flush (marvered)
into the surface. This two-color gather was then blown into
a globular shape, its lower side-wall modified with square-nosed
pliers and its upper body cut to form the bowl's rim.
A similar
technique also was used to create polychrome two-handled jars
and bottles, except that the initial gather was partially
blown before it was rolled in a heap of colored glass chips.
Subsequent marvering then smeared out the decorative colors
and completion of the blowing process stretched those colors
into a host of flowing patterns. The pinched-rib bowls were
exported the length and breadth of the Empire, whereas polychrome
vessels only found favor in the western provinces.
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![](pinch_ribbed.jpg) Pinch-ribbed cup Ht., 6.5 cm Mid-to-late 1st century A.D. From Vaison, France
![](polychrome.jpg) Two-handled polychrome jar Ht., 11.7 cm Mid-to-late 1st century A.D. From Lebanon
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