SHOW & TELL - Egyptian Glass bottles

More participants are here at Kelly's

When you are in Egypt you will see artists on the street who are selling these little bottles. It's usually a landscape with a camel. We saw one at work and how he filled in the little bottles (even smaller sizes) lay by lay.

Mr. Gattino asked him if he could do a cat instead of the usual camel. I never thought he could do it, I was convinced that the way he did it was like a pattern he automatically used all the time. But no, he did it !



It was very interesting to watch him. He sat there with a little table and had in a big bowl very fine natural sand out of the Red sea. In other bowls there was the sand mixed with colored pigments in all sort of colors.

He then took an empty bottle and a very little funnel and a spoon and started to fill in the bottle with the colored sand lay by lay. I was fascinated by his work. It went rather quick it was amazing !



And he managed to make a cat ! He kept the pattern of the background but I am sure that was the first time that a tourist asked him a cat ! Unfortunately I have no picture of him. I filmed the whole procedure. In 2004 I didn't think of photography yet !


Here you see both sides


and a close up to show you the sand. Isn't that an amazing artwork ? I don't remember the price but it was ridiculously cheap. Of course we gave him more for his extra work.