Overview
- In February 2023, Hallie Meredith turned a Metropolitan Museum diatretum and spotted crosses, diamonds and leaves beside a long-life inscription, prompting a broader investigation.
- Comparative tracing across museum holdings shows the same abstract symbols recur on vessels dated to the fourth through sixth centuries CE.
- Tool-mark study, unfinished fragments and inscriptions indicate coordinated teams of engravers, polishers and apprentices produced the cups over months or years.
- Meredith describes the motifs as collective brands that signaled workshop identity rather than decorative flourishes or personal autographs.
- The findings, published in the Journal of Glass Studies in April 2025 and World Archaeology in October 2025, now underpin a searchable inscription database and a monograph in progress with Cambridge University Press.