Week 9 History Essay

How did the collapse of the Roman Empire lead to the creation of a wide variety of glass styles compared to the common style (clear, thin) that was produced within the Empire?

           During the Roman Empire, glass was made with Natron, and everyone made glass the same way. Then the Roman Empire collapsed, and glass-making skills declined, so they could not make glass the same way. People now had to find new ways to make glass using different materials. Forest glass is one of the new types of glass made during that time. It was made with wood-ash and sand. It was much thicker than Roman glass, and it was a green or brown color, and sometimes had bubbles in it. Other places in the world used other materials, like different plants and braken with the sand to make their own glass. Now the glass did not all look the same as it did in the Roman Empire, and people could not make many different kinds of glass.