We typically think of glass as a stable material that doesn’t change with time, but the truth is much more complicated. Glass doesn’t last forever—and the endless possible recipes for glass developed over thousands of years can pose a challenge for modern conservators trying to preserve history.
School of Engineering and Applied Science Professor Murray Loew, an expert in medical imaging and image analysis, has been working on a project that aims to save rare historical flutes from deterioration and improve preservation guidelines for historical glass.
The National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) awarded Dr. Loew and his research partners at the Library of Congress and Catholic University a three-year grant in 2017 to research historical 19th century glass. The interdisciplinary team is developing a decision tree that will help conservators at museums across the country effectively evaluate the condition of glass artifacts, since symptoms of deterioration are often described with vague, undefined words like “weeping” or “crizzling.”
“Different people will look at the same piece of glass and define it differently, so one of our goals is to provide objective, reproducible measures that can describe the glass as it ages,” Dr. Loew said.