Mould made lamps date back to the start of the third century BC, in the Eastern Mediterranean. Mould making soon came to dominate other methods of production – namely wheel making. Wheelmade lamps were trickier to produce – they were largely undecorated, given that any decor needed to be moulded separately, applied to the body of the lamp and then fired. Moulding enabled easy decoration – the mould only needed to be made once – and the mass production of oil lamp. The spread of this technique across the Graeco Roman world facilitated the creation of a vast spectrum of oil lamp shapes and designs.
To discover more about oil lamps in Antiquity, please visit our relevant blog post: Lighting The Way.
