About the collection
The collection of antique glass at the Museum August Kestner contains objects of different manufacturing techniques from the Eastern Mediterranean, the Black Sea region, Roman glass from the Rhineland as well as Frankish and Islamic pieces. In terms of time, it covers the spectrum from the 2nd millennium BC to the 10th century AD.
When the August Kestner Museum was opened in 1889, the antique glass from the collections of August Kestner and Friedrich Culemann hardly conveyed an impression of the diversity of antique glass art, so that this stock was constantly expanded through targeted purchases and donations. Particularly after the First World War, this stock was expanded by collections, some of them very well-known (e.g. Slg. Baurat Schiller, Berlin, or Slg. Carl Anton Niessen, Cologne). By delimiting collection areas, it was possible to take over antique glass from the then Ruhrland Museum (Essen) and the Wallraf-Richartz Museum (Cologne) in 1935/36. (AVS)