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Ancient Egyptian

Fragment of a Checkerboard Patterned Inlay

Ptolemaic Period, (1st century BCE)
Glass, mosaic technique
1.5 × 1 cm (0.6 × 0.4 in)

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In the collection of Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago · as of July 2026

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FROM THE ART INSTITUTE OF CHICAGO’S CATALOG

In ancient Rome, there was a high demand for colorful glass that could dazzle banquet guests alongside the expensive silver and gold serving wares meant to impress. Fragments like this one would have once been a part of larger mosaic dishes. The mosaic pattern was made by sagging molten glass into bowl-shaped molds, a technique used on many of these fragments is similar to millefiori, “thousand flowers” in Italian, a modern glass-making method in which tiny rods of colored glass are bundled together, wrapped in a sheet of glass, fused, and then thinly sliced to reveal swirls of a flower-like patterns. They were arranged side by side, sometimes together with bits of colored glass, and fused together with heat.

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