Glassmaking in Old Hungary [antikvár]

Knowledge about glass is as old as the written word. The oldest glass object known so far, a turbid greenish-blue bead, was dug up by Flinders Petrie in a cemetery in the vicinity of Thebes. As suggested by the conditions under which the find was made, this bead had rested for no less than 5500 years in Egyptian sand, providing evidence that the secret of glassmaking was known to the Egyptians at the dawn of their history. Egyptian glass beads were carried to areas far from the sources of the brilliant civilizations of antiquity, to where migrating northern peoples lived under barbarous conditions at much later periods. Not only the finished goods were spread but alsó the secret of production. Glass was made in every part of the vast Román Empire, which united the whole known world of antiquity. Moreover, the technique of production was developed to the level of imaginative art, and glass, a ma-terial of chameleon-like diversity, offered boundless possibilities for artistic effect. The secret of manufacture did not fali into oblivion after the disso-lution of the Román Empire. Like so many other cultural achieve-ments, it became the heritage of the European peoples who carved up the collapsing Empire. In the early Middle Ages, the artistic stand-ards of glassmaking greatly declined. This setback was, however, only temporary and soon followed by an upswing. In the Mediterranean region Italy took the leading role. For several centuries Venice held a virtual monopoly in the production of glass, but at the end of the 16th century Germán and Czech glassmakers started to develop into serious rivals. Noteworthy national glassworks were set up alsó in other Euró-