Glass artisans in both Mesopotamia and Iran
continued to hand down ancient glass techniques to
posterity over a long period of time. The method of
producing a glass vessel by grinding out a block of
glass and then finishing both the inside and the
outside surfaces by polishing was well established in
northern Mesopotamia in the eighth century BCE and
it spread to the Iranian highlands with the rise of the
Achaemenid dynasty in Persia. This tradition enabled
the glass industry of the East to continue to flourish
under the Sassanian emperors (247-651 CE) when
their production rivaled that of both Rome and
Byzantium. In addition to the possible application of
pressing glass on a rotary mold, the Sassanian glass
artisans acquired the technique of cutting glass, for
which they were justifiably famous, from
contemporary craftsmen engaged in carving hard
stones. In particular, they mimicked the techniques
and forms of rock crystal. The colorless but weighty
relief-decorated tablewares were in great demand.
The weight of these glass bowls was due their thick-
walls since facet-cut bowls called for quite a robust
body in the glass to withstand the pressures of wheel
cutting and polishing. Vessels exhibiting honeycomb
facet-cutting are characteristic of their art.
The astonishing artistic survival of this tradition
persisted into Islamic times. These bowls were
carefully kept as heirlooms or presented as donations;
some even reached Japan, one having been excavated
in tumulus tomb of the emperor Ankan (531-535 CE)
and a second, perhaps having been a donation to the
Tōdai-ji temple at Nara by the emperor Shōmu who
ruled in the late eighth century CE.
