# Group of Checkerboard Patterned Inlays

- By: Ancient Egyptian
- Date: Ptolemaic Period, (1st century BCE)
- Medium: Glass, mosaic technique
- Classification: Decorative Arts
- Dimensions: Ea: 1.5 × 1.8 × 25 cm (5/8 × 11/16 × 1/8 in.)
- Culture: Italy
- Credit line: Gift of Theodore W. and Frances S. Robinson
- Museum: [Art Institute of Chicago](https://www.artic.edu/artworks/67875)
- Rights: [Public domain (CC0)](https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/)
- Picture: https://www.artic.edu/iiif/2/b566f34c-37e7-abb1-5f51-1f56d2e990da/full/!1920,1080/0/default.jpg
- Who can see it: Little Ones profiles and older (museums give no ratings; placed by Invisible Network from the museum's own words)

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.

Description © Art Institute of Chicago, CC BY 4.0