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A Short History of Pate de Verre
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Pate de verre, the name bestowed by the
French in the late 19th century and by which we know the technique
today, is one of the oldest known forms of glass working. Ancient
Mesopotamian cuneiform texts dating back to the early 2nd millennium
BCE describe their methods of working glass. Glass was treated as a
special material, and valued accordingly, as inlays in jewelry and
sculpture and other art objects. Because of the time and
techniques involved in kiln casting; ie model making, mold making,
preparing the glass, filling the mold, kiln firing, and cleaning and
polishing; kiln cast glass was prized. One Egyptian name for it is
'Stone that Flows'.
While the Mesopotamians are the earliest known culture to have
developed glass forming techniques, Egyptians quickly added to the body
of knowledge. These techniques first flowered around 1500 - 1000
BCE. Intricate mosaic style vessel forms dating as far back as
1500 BCE have been discovered. These arts went into decline only to be
revived in the 9th century BCE by Egyptian and Assyrian glass artists.
In the 4th and 5th centuries, the Persians produced exquisite glass
vessels made by the same lost wax method that was used for their gold
and silver work. Like most art, glass was for the elite. Casting
became increasingly sophisticated and the 3rd century BCE to the 1st
century CE saw the production of some magnificent glass by the small
independent glass shops throughout the Middle East. With the
introduction of glass blowing by the Romans at the beginning of the
Common Era, however, glass objects quickly became available to the
common people and the number of small glass studios declined as kiln
cast techniques were supplanted by glass blowing.
The kiln cast glass arts languished until their renaissance in the 19th
and 20th centuries in Europe. This revival was centered in France
and was influenced by the archeological discoveries of the time. The
kiln cast glass techniques were intriguing to French artists like Henri
Cros, Argy-Rousseau, Amalric Walter, and Frederick Carder of the United
States who were interested in the beauty of glass as a material. The
Industrial Revolution supplied better technology for the casting and
finishing techniques. With the onset of WW1, however, these glass arts
once again faded away.
Modern glass arts are founded in the Studio movement started in the
last half of the 20th century. The technology for building and
maintaining small glass blowing and kiln firing studios spread which
has allowed the glass arts to be explored once again in a fashion not
enjoyed since before the Common Era. Because the pate de verre
technique is still very labor intensive, involving all the steps
addressed above from model making to polishing, it is still a rarity in
the world of glass art and valued accordingly. |
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