The history of glass is vast and spreads across countries, continents, techniques and styles, but we’ve pulled together just a few highlights from its intricate beginnings to show you how powerful glass really is.

Before people learnt how to make glass, a naturally occurring glass named Obsidian, otherwise known as Volcanic glass, which was black in colour, was used to create weapons, jewellery, money and other decorative objects.

The very first glimpse of man-made glass was originally found in 3100 BC in Egypt, with the first glass vessels discovered again in Egypt, in 1500 BC. From this point, the production of glass erupted and Egypt, along with Syria and other countries along the mediterranean sea were at the centre of glass production.

By 1350 BC the Egyptians had mastered a complex chemical process to create opaque glass, colourless glass, and even mosaic (millefiori) glass by adding various minerals or mineral oxides into the glass mixture. Some of the most popular minerals used included Cobalt and Azurite for Blue, Red for Gold, Iron for Green and Yellow, Manganese for Pink and Violet. This technique has also been used to make the world-famous Murano glass and Millefiori glass.

Millefiori glass, which in Italian means “a thousand flowers” is a type of mosaic glassware characterised by a flowerlike pattern. Millefiori glass is most frequently associated with Venetian glassware.

As glass production ramped up, the desire to make this process easier, faster and cheaper began to take over. Glass melting furnaces were small and never produced quite the right amount of heat to melt the glass efficiently. But in the 1st century BC, Syrian craftsmen were the first to invent the blowpipe and the technique of glass blowing. This revolutionary discovery allowed the production of glass to flourish across the world.