In the Classical period the most revolutionary developments were in glassmaking. The sand-core technique went out of fashion, while Egypt took the lead with an output of mould-pressed ware, beautifully finished by grinding and polishing. Colored rods or 'canes' were fused together and then cut transversely in order to make polychrome glasses; this culminated in mosaic glasses and bowls such as graced the Roman emperors' table. But the biggest change came not from the Alexandrian centre but almost certainly from Syria, whence it spread across the Roman world with astonishing speed in the early years of the empire. This was the art of glass-blowing, which probably began with the blowing of vessels within moulds; as skill improved, moulds were dispensed with. Free-blown glass was produced as a bubble on the end of a blowpipe, and shaped with pliers; transferred while still molten on to the end of a second rod; the process was completed by detaching the blowpipe, leaving a mouth to be trimmed with shears. Reheating his glass when necessary, the blower could blow and spin it into almost any shape, from flat dishes 2 ft in diameter to a small jug inserted into a larger one. By the second century A.D. the glass industry had spread from Italy to important new manufacturing centers with improved techniques round Cologne and Trier, whence it also reached Britain. Minor technical changes were diffused so fast that there must have been a constant movement of skilled glass-makers from the Near Eastern centers all across the empire. Finds ranging from Afghanistan to the Sahara, Scandinavia, and the northern highlands of Scotland show the popularity of imperial glass even among the outer barbarians.

The centuries of the Pax Romana, with its widespread opportunities for trade, are likewise something of a landmark in the history of ceramics, textiles, and furniture, to which we must now briefly turn. Greek pottery reached its climax in the Athenian vases of the sixth and fifth centuries B.C., both as regards decoration--by which alone we can judge the glories of the long-vanished mural and panel paintings of the Greeks--and technique. Decoration was applied after the vase had dried leather-hard but before it was fired, a method facilitated by the toughness of Athenian clay, and one which helped to achieve smoothness in the lines of the drawing; fresh clay could be applied for details. The whole surface of the vase was covered with a thin wash of clay, on which the design was sketched out with a blunt tool. The figures were then painted in, lines drawn inside the silhouettes, and the background given a contrasting color--usually red on black, or black on red. The exact coloration depended on conditions within the kiln, the practice being to fire the vessel in three successive stages, in which air was respectively freely admitted, then limited, and finally admitted freely again. With the decline of Athens early in the fourth century B.C. there arose the potteries of southern Italy, using the same technique. But farther north, in Tuscany, the Greeks had a rival in the famous black Etruscan pots, bearing a design in relief, such as became common with Greek ware a century or two later. This involved the preparation of a thick-walled mould, on the inner side of which a design was cut; this was then fastened to the potter's wheel, and a bowl was spun inside it, pressure being applied from within by hand to secure the relief. The products of two or more moulds were often combined to form such articles as jugs.

The Romans of the first century B.C. produced their Arretine bowls by the same system of relief-molding at the former Etruscan city of Arezzo. The glaze, both of the Arretine vases and of a very common type of pottery derived from them, which archaeologists call terra sigillata, was a brilliant coral red in color. The Romans also produced a blue-green glaze ware, which is likewise found in many parts of the empire. This was a lead glaze, melting at a definite temperature, into which the vase was dipped to coat the outside, while a thinner coating was applied to the inner surface. Much domestic ware was, however, left unglazed. The making of terracotta statuary and reliefs was another Greek, Etruscan, and Roman practice, in which the use of the mould replaced free modeling. Not only did the use of moulds, several for each figure, make it possible to produce identical figures quickly, but the figures themselves could be hollow.

The contribution of Greece and Rome to the textile industries lies first and foremost in their choice of raw material. Their finest flax came from Egypt, but they had their own wool, which they improved by selective breeding. Sheep shears of a modern type, meant for use in one hand, were probably a Roman invention. Silk is first recorded in the west in the first century A.D. as an expensive eastern fabric; descriptions of the source of raw material are confused. Cotton, however, had been brought from India and was now grown on the south-eastern periphery of the Mediterranean, and there, was large-scale manufacture of cotton goods in Roman Malta. Important changes in the textile processes, however, were very few, and in no case fundamental. The dyes used continued to be mainly vegetable, but the Romans attached importance to the costly purple dye of Phoenicia--a dark violet inclined to brown. This 'imperial purple' was obtained, a few drops at a time, from a gland in several species of mollusks; for the best results Murex brandaris was used. Twentieth century chemists have found that this costly dyestuff, which gave a pound of wool a value of $80, is closely related to the vegetable dye indigo.

In furniture, too, classical civilization introduced no radical changes, though the improved tools of the Iron Age encouraged an increasing mastery of technique. The Greeks contributed to furniture only a new type of chair, having a woven seat supported upon curved legs and with a curved back--a chair which, unlike its Egyptian predecessors, was not completely rigid but could be varied to suit the comfort of the individual. The Romans were the first makers of strong tables and of shelved cupboards. Armies returning from the Asiatic campaigns of the last two centuries B.C. brought with them to Rome the idea of many oriental luxuries, including the sideboard, and with the general trend towards luxury and ostentation, there was extensive use of costly veneers and of metal furniture-fittings and furniture.

The most important new tool was the lathe which perhaps dates back to about 1500 B.C., but was brought into wide use for wood- turning by the Greeks. No ancient specimen is extant, but it was probably developed out of the bow-drill, or perhaps the potter's wheel, and made a special appeal to a people who loved geometrical perfection. Iron hand-tools had been much developed by the Assyrians in the eighth century, and the Greeks probably had prototypes of the tools which were in common use among the Romans.

In nearly every case the tool of iron was an improvement upon its copper or bronze predecessor: iron saws were the first to have raked teeth; modern files and rasps supplemented the plane. Working with such tools for a luxury-loving society, the Romans used most of the techniques and many of the exotic materials, such as tortoise-shell and ivory, which made their next appearance to meet the demand of wealthy patrons in western Europe after a gap of more than a thousand years.

Little is known of the wood-working crafts of northern Europe during this long period, but the word 'carpenter', which comes to us, through the Latin, from the two-wheeled Celtic cart (carpentum) which the Romans greatly admired, is a reminder that the men of the most forested areas were not inactive. It is hardly too much to say that the peasant wood-working crafts, often carried out in the home in the darkness of the northern winter, represent a living tradition (or, at least, one of only yesterday) which goes back to a Neolithic practice of wood-working distinct from that of the Mediterranean world. The men of the north made much more extensive use of their plentiful timber, eating off wood rather than pottery, and living in wooden houses rather than in ones of stone or brick. Moreover, they had plenty of soft woods, such as pine, beech, and birch, which could be worked more easily than the hard woods favored by Mediterranean craftsmen and were suited to more primitive needs. The northerners, in short, were better at carpentering than at joining, and were wielders of the axe, the adze, and the knife rather than the more accurate saws and planes of the south. . .

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