New life for antiques shattered by the Beirut explosion

Broken whenexplosion that ravaged Beirut in 2020delicate glass containers, some of which date back to Antiquity, have regained their integrity after meticulous work in British Museumwhere they will be exhibited.

“It’s a story of near destruction, restoration, resilience and collaboration”said Wednesday August 24 Hartwig Fischer, director of the famous British cultural institution. “Two years after the explosion in Beirut, we are delighted to display these old glass containers”who will then return to Lebanon by the end of the year, he added.

These pieces, flasks but also colorful utensils, were in a showcase at the American University of Beirut (AUB) when the shock wave from the explosion in the port, 3 km away, knocked it over. Of the 74 fallen pieces, only two were recovered intact. Specialists have restored 26 of them, including the eight on display. Experts hope to soon rehabilitate at least half of the remaining 46.

Giant puzzles

The British Museum and the AUB began collaborating on this project in 2021. A colossal task: each small shard of glass had to be sorted to determine whether it was a remnant of the objects on display… or the window that contained them. A sort “hand-made”looking at “the appearance of the surface and the shape of the glass”explained Duygu Camurcuoglu, curator at the British Museum.

And that’s when the reconstruction of all these giant puzzles began, using an adhesive. The most difficult were “the large dish and the Byzantine carafe”she recalled.

Curators agreed on the need to restore the structural integrity of the vessels. But they decided not to remove the cracks and aesthetic imperfections of the reconstructed objects, to bear witness to the tragedy of August 4, 2020 which left more than 200 dead, 6,500 injured and devastated entire neighborhoods.

The exhibition at the British Museum will show the stages traversed by the objects, from their destruction to their arrival in the showcases. “Patiently reconstructing these containers from tiny pieces has made it possible to recognize their historical value”welcomed Nadine Panayot, curator of the AUB Archaeological Museum, referring to “a healing process (which) also made me hope for a better future”.

These objects, the fruit of Greek, Byzantine but also Islamic know-how, illustrate the evolution of the techniques of glassblowers in the Middle East.

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