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Archaeologists show off rare Roman find
LONDON, England (CNN) -- Archaeologists excavating a site in East London have
made an "extremely rare and unprecedented" find -- a delicately detailed dish made of
hundreds of pieces of tiny glass petals, the Museum of London Docklands announced
Wednesday.
The "millefiori" dish (the name means "thousand flowers") was found buried in the grave
of a Roman Londoner, the museum said.
Based on the other grave goods found at the site, archaeologists believe the person buried
there was wealthy, the museum said.
The dish was highly fragmented when archaeologists unearthed it, the museum said, but
it had been held together over the
centuries by the earth around it.
A conservator at the museum reassembled
the dish, which is now on display at the
Museum of London Docklands.
"Piecing together and conserving such a
complete artifact offered a rare and
thrilling challenge," said conservator Liz
Goodman, who did the work.
"We occasionally get tiny fragments of
millefiori, but the opportunity to work on a whole artifact of this nature is extraordinary.
The dish is extremely fragile but the glasswork is intact and illuminates beautifully nearly
2,000 years after being crafted."
The glass petals are blue with white
borders and are each indented. They were
originally embedded in opaque red glass,
the museum said, and while the red
coloring has diminished across most of
the dish, it can still be seen around the
edge.
"The complexity of its manufacture
indicates that the dish was a highly-prized
and valuable item," the museum said in a
statement.
Such beautifully crafted vessels were in vogue in the 1st and early 2nd centuries, the
museum said. Dating is under way to determine the precise period of the find.
The excavations that uncovered the dish are part of an ongoing dig at the extensive
eastern cemetery of Roman London, which was then called Londinium. The site now lies
in the neighborhood of Aldgate.
The cemetery -- which, by law, lay outside the city walls -- spanned more than 400 years
of Roman occupation from the late 1st to early 5th centuries, the museum said.
History of millefiori
Millefiori-decorated objects have been created intermittently from the time of ancient
Mesopotamia to the present day. Bowls of fused millefiori canes are known to have been
made in ancient Rome and Alexandria, and there are a few references to examples of
millefiori work during the Renaissance.
By the eighteenth century, however, the technical knowledge for the manufacture of
millefiori was lost. It was not until the nineteenth century that a revival of the technique
appeared.
By the end of the 1830s, millefiori were manufactured successfully in Silesia-Bohemia.
Within two or three years of its rediscovery, factories in Venice, England, and France
were also producing quantities of millefiori canes.
Process of Manufacture
Cut from long, thin glass rods, millefiori canes
were prepared in the following manner: The
glassworker took a gather of molten glass on a
pontil, or long iron rod, and rolled it back and forth
on a marver, or flat surface, until it formed a solid
cylinder. The cylinder was then pressed into a diecut mold that had a geometric shape or the outline
of a specific animal or figure. The piece was further
embellished by dipping on additional layers of
varying colors of glass. As each layer was added, it
was rolled onto the ever-growing cylinder or
pressed into increasingly larger molds to vary the
cane's ultimate design.
Creating a patterned glass cane
The finished cylinder of glass, approximately six inches
long and three inches in diameter, was reheated until
pliant. Pontil rods attached to each end were pulled apart,
stretching the yielding cylinder pencil-thin. The stretched
cooled cane was then sliced into hundreds of little discs,
each an exact miniaturization of the original design. For
more complex designs, lengths of the stretched canes
were cut into six-inch pieces, bundled in a geometric
pattern, heated until fused together, stretched pencil-thin,
and slices again. In this manner, glassworkers were able
to produce unlimited millefiori cane designs from a
limited selection of molds
Once a quantity of millefiori canes was produced, they
were combined into a variety of patterns limited only by the ingenuity of the artisan. To
create a paperweight, a design of canes was arranged in a metal ring, and a gather of
molten glass on the end of a pontil rod was brought down upon the design. The canes
adhered to the molten glass. The rod was repeatedly dipped in glass until an adequately
thick lens was produced over the
millefiori design. While still plastic,
the glass was blocked and shaped.
Slightly cooled to a stable state, it was
broken off the pontil rod and placed in
an annealing oven to cool slowly.
Cane types
Making a paperweight containing millefiori
There are specific kinds of canes
canes.
formed by the glassmakers. They
include, in addition to the myriad types of flower-like patterns, the simplest rod canes,
star canes, cog canes (shaped liked the cogs of
a gear wheel), Clichy Rose cane, and
silhouette canes, which contain a figure of an
animal, person, or plant, a date or maker's
mark.
Millefiori patterns in paperweights
Millefiori weights are categorized into types and named according to the
configuration of the canes.


Scrambled millefiori weights feature what looks like a stirred
mixture of different canes
Single cane millefiori weights contain just one centerpatterned
cane on a textured background


Close millefiori weights contain a small forest
of canes thrusting up from the base side by side with little
space between them.

Chequers millefiori weights get their name from the filigree
twists that act as separators among the space canes.

Concentric millefiori weights may be
closely positioned or spaced in rings around
a center cane.
Pattern millefiori weights feature canes that are
arranged in patterns such as lines, flower-like forms, or
symmetrical rings.

Garland millefiori weights contain canes
arranged in loops, lobes, C-scrolls, or
circlets.
 Carpet ground millefiori weights look like a carpet of small
identical ( often star or rod) canes interspersed with larger
spaced millefiori canes.
Name______________________________
Rare Roman find
Each question is worth 5 points. For full credit, you must answer in complete
sentences and include all appropriate information. Explain your answers!
1. The archaeologists dug up a glass dish made that is over 2,000 years old. Why
wasn’t it destroyed in all that time?
2. Where, exactly, was the dish found? Who owned the dish originally?
3. What is “millefiori”?
4. Even though it was very popular in ancient times, the art of millefiori had been
lost by the 1700s. When were the techniques rediscovered?
5. The discs used to decorate millefiori objects are sliced from multi-color glass
“canes.” Describe how millefiori canes are manufactured (continue on the back of
this page if necessary):