Beginning on Thursday, eight ancient glass jars that were damaged in the 2020 Beirut explosion will be on exhibit at the British Museum, bringing visitors through the laborious restoration process.
The Roman, Byzantine, and Islamic-era vessels were restored in the world-renowned museum's conservation labs, and they will be displayed as part of its "Shattered Glass of Beirut" exhibition before being sent back to Lebanon later this year. The 74 items in the case at the American University of Beirut included the vessels (AUB).
The case tipped over when the building was struck by the shockwave of the port bomb, which took place on August 4, 2020, three kilometres (two miles) away and broke the glass items inside.
According to Duygu Camurcuoglu, a senior conservator at the British Museum, the difficult work of classifying each piece of glass into whether it came from an ancient vessel or a display case and which vessel it belonged to involved a team of experts. "It's all pretty much done by hand or by eye -- brainwork basically. You have to know certain techniques to be able to carry out this work," she added.
Together with the eight vessels housed in the British Museum and the two that were unharmed in the collapse, 18 of the vessels have so far been preserved as part of an emergency recovery campaign in Beirut. Experts anticipate that at least half of the 46 remaining items in Beirut will soon be able to be preserved.
Following a support request from the London institution, the British Museum, the AUB's Archaeological Museum, and other institutions began working together in 2021.
Early on, conservators decided to preserve the vessels' structural integrity while revealing the explosion's evident shattering-related flaws. "We all individually felt that, I think, we contributed to something by working on these objects -- by sharing this pain, these emotions.
"So it's not only about the conservation... but also the working together and achieving something together," she added.
Visitors to the exhibition will follow the glass vessels' journey from the explosion to their display in the renowned London museum.
In the show, lighting will be employed to reveal glass cracks and gaps. The jars are thought to be significant in illustrating how new glass-blowing skills emerged in Lebanon in the first century BC, allowing for the mass manufacture of glass goods and their accessibility to the general public. The conservators take great delight in their restoration and the collaborative effort that went into it, according to Camurcuoglu.