History of Colorless Glass
Most glass is made of silica (sand), lime, and soda ash. These ingredients have natural impurities (like iron oxide), so they produce a greenish glass. Glassmakers have been adding chemicals to glass since Roman times to try to make clear glass, but it wasn't until the 15th century that they were able to develop a dependable formula. In the late 1400s, glassmakers in Venice, Italy, developed a perfectly clear type of glass called cristallo. They used quartz sand and potash to make the glass. This glass was prized because it was so clear, which might seem strange to us, because clear glass is so common today.
Some Early Uses of Colorless Glass
The development of colorless glass led to the invention of important technology like magnifying lenses and reading glasses. Later on, in 1674, a man named George Ravenscroft invented a type of glass known as lead crystal. He added lead oxide to his glass recipe to make brilliant colorless glass. This glass was often cut with complex geometric patterns to make the glass sparkle like gemstones. Today colorless glass is everywhere. We see colorless glass windows, tableware, mirrors, and more. We don't even notice it, but it took many hundreds of years before glass was both colorless and cheap enough for average people to buy!
Learn More
Read Now
- The Crysler Museum of Glass held an exhibition about Colorless Glass in 2020-2021. They produced useful resources and guides related to this exhibition. See:
- The exhibition website, Clear as Crystal: Colorless Glass from the Chrysler Museum | Chrysler Museum of Art
- A timeline of objects in the exhibition, Clear as Crystal Timeline | Chrysler Museum of Art
- The Properties of Colorless Glass | Chrysler Museum of Art
- Archeological analysis of the chemical makeup of colorless clear glasses The composition of colourless glass: a review by Elisabetta Gliozzo
Read Later
- Making Colourless Glass in the Roman Period by Caroline Jackson, Archaeometry, v. 47, pt. 4 (2005), pp. 763-780
- About the Beauty of Glass, Transparent and Colorless -- an Essay by Junshirō Satō in Japanese, Glass (Garasu) no. 18, March 1985, pp. 2-5
- Material Analysis of Colourless Lead Glasses from a Late 17th Century Glasshouse Site in Groningen (the Netherlands) by Katharina Müller Annales du 17e Congrès de l'Association Internationale pour l'Histoire du Verre pp. 401-407, ill.
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