bowl

The discovery of fragments of mosaic glass vessels and tiles in the ruins of a caliph’s palace built in 836-842 at Samarra (Iraq) indicates that some Islamic mosaic glass was made in the ninth century. It is not known when this production began or ended. With the possible exception of beads, there is no evidence of Sasanian or Roman mosaic glass manufacture after the fourth century. This seems to suggest that the mosaic glassmaking technique may have been rediscovered by Islamic craftsmen. Although little mosaic glass appears to have been produced in the Islamic world, it was nevertheless widely distributed, from Egypt to Iran. This restored bowl is made of cane slices with an opaque yellow circle at the center, surrounded by an opaque white ring and a ring of small white spots in a “black” matrix. When complete, the wall and floor of the vessel would have contained some 1,300 slices.