Glass Crafts in Northern India

Glass Crafts in Northern India is not only about beads and bangles, their production cycles, people involved in their manufacture and the craftsmen, but also about one of the most important glass-craft clusters of the world. The evolution of technology and skills with regard to the making of the furnace and kiln over the centuries and invention of new methods for producing variety of beads are the essence of this volume. The archaeological community has reconstructed ancient cities with glass-making and/or glass-working workshops and has formulated many hypotheses about them, thereby recording ethnographically and visually a cluster of glass cities identical to those which existed millennia ago. When read in combination with the first volume of the trilogy on Indian glass, i.e. Mapping Indo-Pacific Beads vis-à-vis Papanaidupet, one gets a clear idea of what to expect in the archaeological field if the site was engaged with production of glass beads and bangles. This attempt has captured a visual model for future glass researchers. The volume discusses the history and context of research on Indian glass, drawing its data from ancient literature, archives, and ethnohistorical and archaeological sources. Finally, it attempts to document the evolution and practised knowledge system of India’s glass industry and about the role of furnace wound glass beads.