Glass

The term glass comes from Germanic, where glasa meant "the shining" or "the shimmering". Glass is an underlying material in many areas and is also frequently used in jewellery making. The generic term glass covers numerous groups of amorphous solids with the same or similar properties. As a rule, glass consists of silicon dioxide, which is also the main material for most of the glass used commercially. In addition to this inorganic glass, however, there are also glasses made from organic materials, e.g. amber or the artificially obtained acrylic. The fact that glass can be coloured almost at will creates a multi-layered possibility for the jewellery industry to produce multifaceted products. For the mass production of glass, the necessary silicon dioxide, sodium oxide and other important elements are extracted from raw materials such as quartz sand, soda, potash, feldspar, lime, dolomite and waste glass. The respective raw material is melted and then shaped into the required form intended for the respective use. Hollow glass for bottles and tableware, glass fibres for the production of glass wool, flat glass and tubular glass for industrial purposes. Stained glass is an important component of many jewellery creations due to its inexpensive production and its handsome appearance.