In early 2023, art historian and glassblower Hallie Meredith stood inside a quiet gallery at the Metropolitan Museum of Art when she noticed something that centuries of scholars had overlooked.
Meredith, a professor at Washington State University, was studying a private collection of Roman glass cage cups—fragile luxury vessels carved between 300 and 500 CE.
These cups, known as diatreta, were crafted from a single thick block of glass and are admired for their delicate openwork designs.
But Meredith’s breakthrough came not from advanced imaging or special tools. It came from simply turning one of the cups around.
On the back of a late-Roman cup, she spotted a set of abstract symbols—diamonds, leaves, crosses—carved next to an inscription wishing the owner a long life. These shapes had long been dismissed as decoration.
Meredith, trained as a glassblower who naturally examines objects from all angles, saw something different. She realized that these shapes were likely makers’ marks: the signatures of workshops and artisans who carved these remarkably intricate vessels.
Her discovery led to two research papers, published in the Journal of Glass Studies and World Archaeology, in which she traced similar symbols across other carved glass vessels.
The repeated patterns revealed a shared visual language among glassworkers from the fourth to sixth centuries CE, allowing her to identify groups of makers who had remained unseen until now.
By studying tool marks, inscriptions, and even unfinished pieces, Meredith showed that the famous Roman openwork glass was not created by a single master craftsman.
Instead, teams of specialists worked together—engravers shaping the design, polishers finishing the surface, and apprentices learning the trade.
The abstract marks were not personal autographs but likely workshop signatures, similar to a modern studio brand.
For more than 250 years, researchers have debated how these cups were made, arguing over whether they were carved, cast, or blown.
Meredith’s findings shift the question away from tools and techniques and toward the people behind the work. A diatretum began as a thick-walled blank of glass.
Artisans then carved it into two layers connected by narrow bridges, creating an airy lattice structure that seems almost impossibly delicate. This process required intense skill, coordination, and long periods of labor.
Meredith’s background as a glassblower gives her a unique understanding of these techniques. She teaches a course at WSU that invites students to recreate ancient processes, using 3D printers and digital tools to explore how ancient craftspeople worked. She believes this hands-on experience builds empathy and helps bring ancient workers back into focus.
Her upcoming book, The Roman Craftworkers of Late Antiquity, will explore this world in even greater depth. Meredith is also collaborating with computer science students to develop a database of unusual or misspelled inscriptions on ancient artifacts.
She suggests that what once looked like mistakes might instead reflect multilingual artisans adapting writing for diverse customers.
Her work encourages scholars and the public to look again—and look closer—at ancient objects. Behind the elegant patterns of a Roman glass cup lies the creativity, collaboration, and identity of the people who made it.
