Object of the Week: Medallion with Portrait, probably Rome, about 300 CE. Purchased in part with funds from the Clara S. Peck Endowment Fund. 90.1.3. 

Only about two dozen gold-glass medallions like this one have survived. To make this emblem, the artist glued a sheet of thin gold foil to a flat piece of blue glass and scratched away the background with a stylus. Next, the glassworker heated the decorated disk to about 900 degrees F, any hotter and the gold would have burned away. Once heated, it was picked up on the end of a blown glass bubble, sandwiching the gold between two layers of glass.