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A klutz like me Really should not be allowed to hold this. However, I am here in an office lined with books in art merchants Charles Ede in London, with a Roman glass bottle in my hand. The bottle, a small murderous sphere rising to a thin neck, a handful in green glass, the other in blue, weighs almost nothing. Its glass is thinner than a bulb. I don't trust myself.
“This is like the first time that you will hold a baby,” explains Charis Tyndall, director at the gallery. “You are terrified and you realize, in fact, simply hold it in the right way and it will be fine.”
Tyndall has manipulated a lot of Roman glass: Charles Ede holds an exhibition of more than 100 pieces, which Tyndall acquired over several years, from May 29. Some ships will be filled with floral arrangements by Shane Connolly, demonstrating that they are both intact and useful.
Connolly tries to evoke a feeling of continuity with its floral choices. “The Romans really appreciated wild strawberries,” he says. “I brought some of my garden (for the photo shoot). And just the fact that these ships would have seen these wild strawberries, 2000 years ago, that's what I found most interesting. ”
People have been doing glass since the Bronze Age, but the technique of spray was developed by Syrian craftsmen in the first century BC at the Levant. He produced a glass of such lightness that we still have not understood how to reproduce it exactly, explains Sidney Goldstein, former curator of the old glass at the Corning Museum of Glass in New York.
The new ease of glass blowing meant that ships and objects, perhaps up to 100 minutes per year, were produced through the Roman Empire for each possible use: drink, store perfumes and oils, shipping food, like jewelry, mosaics, mirrors, windows. They also came in each shadow, according to the added metal oxides; Colorful glass quickly became the most precious, because the need to eliminate all impurities meant that it was the most complicated to do. Their fragility means that a small proportion has survived, often in the tombs.
Theirs is said to be Charles Ede, the first dedicated commercial exhibition of Roman glass for over 40 years. Although he has a passionate collection base, she is small, her older members and has a (unfair) index of schools, a niche in a niche. Consequently, it is relatively inexpensive compared to the other artifacts of the time: the Charles Ede price range is £ 500 to 25,000.
Certain recent sales at the Bonhams auction house were in the hundreds of low books, explains Joanna Van der Lande, her main consultant for Antiquities in London. She has made sales of large collections of Roman glass and is encouraged to find new bidders, some attracted by the antiquity of objects, others by their modernity – the simplicity of their creations can sit alongside contemporary art.
The world record for Roman glass, believes Van der Lande, is the Constable-Maxwell Cage Cup, where the ornate filigree structure that supports the bowl is sculpted from the same piece of glass; It sold 2.65 million pounds sterling in Bonhams in 2004.
Buyers need to exercise care, of course. Aside from counterfeits (heaviness is generally a clue), there is a veil of suspicion around the old artifacts which could have been illegally removed from the soil, their terrorist networks funding the sale. From June, a new EU regulation Requiring proof of legal export for archaeological artefacts over 250 years old will be addressed to this. Anyone looking to buy must ensure that they buy from renowned dealers; This negotiation for online sales can be more difficult than it is worth it.
But for some, once you have started buying old glass, it can be difficult to stop. Nico Bijnsdorp, one of the major collectors of the world, began in 1995 after seeing a play at Tefaf Art Fair in Maastricht – and ended up with 420, from the 7th century BC in the seventh century AD, paying from £ 100 to 100,000. It was “an addiction,” he said. He sold three-quarters of his collection in 2022-2023 when he and his wife reduced the size.
Unlike me, Bijnsdorp is not afraid to hold his glass. “I don't wear gloves, I just take it with bare hands,” he said. I will take heart: if Roman Glass has survived at 2000 years, it can survive me.
“Roman Glom” takes place in Charles Ede, London, May 29 to June 6, Charlede.com
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