Ancient Glass in the Israel Museum [antikvár]

ForewordA museum is first and foremost a treasury of cultural heritage, its purpose being to preserve and display precious objects of material culture - for the benefit of scholars and professionals and for the delight of the public at large. The study and pubhcation of a museum's collections are central to the fulfillment of this purpose and also constitute one of the most important, and most pleasurable, demands on a museum's time and on its professional resources.One of the Israel Museum's finest assets is undoubtedly its collection of ancient glass, the nucleus of which was donated by the late Eliahu Dobkin in the 1970s. The collection is on continuous display in the Joseph Meyerhoff Pavilion of the Museum's Samuel and Saidye Bronfman Biblical and Archaeological Wing. For more than two decades, it was under the care of Yael Israeli, Senior Curator of Archaeology and former Curator of Ancient Glass, with the dedicated assistance of Maud Spaer. Today it is shepherded by Natasha Katsnelson, Associate Curator of Ancient Glass.In 2001 the Museum was proud to publish two comprehensive catalogues of its ancient glass holdings: Ancient Glass in the Israel Museum: Beads and Other Small Objects and Ancient Class in the Israel Museum: The Eliahu Dobkin Collection and Other Cifts. The former, written in English by Maud Spaer, is the first study to deal in a scholarly fashion with small objects of ancient glass, whose aesthetic worth and historical importance stand in inverse proportion to their size. The latter, written in Hebrew by Yael Israeli, with contributions by Dan Barag and Na'ama Brosh, is devoted to the glass vessels in the collection. It, too, represents a pioneering effort as the first work of its kind to be published in Hebrew, conveying in exhaustive format both the scholarly significance of these treasures and the magical properties of glass. On the occasion of the pubUcation of both volumes, the Museum hosted the exhibition Handled with Care: Glass in the Israel Museum (March 20, 2002, through April 7, 2003), illuminating for the public the heritage of glassmaking which began with its discovery over four thousand years ago and which has continued to fascinate nearly every world culture through contemporary times.With the publication of this English edition of Ancient Glass in the Israel Museum: The Eliahu Dobkin Collection and Other Gifts, its impressive achievement now becomes accessible to curators, scholars, and the general public worldwide. We are indebted to Yael Israeli for her tireless dedication both to the original Hebrew catalogue and to the challenging task of producing it in Enghsh. This enterprise is a crowning tribute to her twenty-five years of devotion to the creation and enrichment of the Museum's holdings in ancient glass. We also thank the other contributors to this volume: Prof. Dan Barag, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, a pioneer in his field in Israel, who advised the late Eliahu Dobkin and shared his love of glass; and Na'ama Brosh, Senior Curator of Islamic Art and Archaeology, who authored the section on Islamic Glass.