Fire of Sidon
Glass
Sidon learned to trap light in sand. Beads, bowls, faces in paste — a craft that moved west with the ships and never went home empty.
Sand, fire, sea
Pliny the Elder tells a story of soda on a Sidonian beach, fusing with sand under cooking fires. Whether the tale is exact, the craft is not in doubt. Sidon became the mother of glass for the Mediterranean: transparent bowls, core-formed bottles, beads that held the sea’s own colours.
The industrial arts of the Phœnicians — purple, glass, metal — were not decorations on someone else’s civilisation. They were the civilisation. Homer knew the Sidonians as cunning makers. The ships carried the fire west. Sardinia, Carthage, Iberia still hold the beads.
Gad Yaton · from the restoration
All crafts