Making Kohl Sticks

Phases of “kohl stick” manufacture. These fragments have been grouped to illustrate the steps of manufacturing the thin twisted glass rods that are called kohl sticks because they were used to apply the black eye paint kohl. Above left are glass sticks strengthened by heat; above right are sticks that, while still hot, were partially twisted with pincers. Below we see fragments of the finished product.

Kohl sticks are rarely found in excavations but can be seen in some museums. In the Jerusalem glass factory, archaeologists discovered an abundance of them as well as the smooth rods that are the raw material for their manufacture.