Medieval Period History of Glass

Medieval Period

Mostly green in color, the glass was first a soda glass composition made with ashes of marine plants imported from the Mediterranean, as had been during Roman times.

Medieval Period

By the late middle ages, however, soda was no longer available, and northern glass makers turned to the wood ash from their own wood-fire furnaces as flux, for a potash-lime glass.

Medieval Period

Because the glasshouses were situated in the forest that provided fuel and ash, the glass made was called forest glass: waldglas. Common glass in the waldglas style was made less and less in European factories until modern times.



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