Striking Dichroic Glass Pyramid in Original Box. Fascinating play of light, color, and reflection throughout. Box has the company logo on the cover, serial # CRY-CUB-VO2. 

Condition: Great. 

Size: 5 x 5 x 5 1/2 in. 

Dichroic glass is glass which can display multiple different colors depending on lighting conditions. One of the most common dichroic materials is a modern composite non-translucent glass that is produced by stacking layers of metal oxides which give the glass shifting colors depending on the angle of view. The resulting glass is used for decorative purposes such as stained glass, jewelry, and other forms of glass art. The commercial title of “dichroic” can also display three or more colors (trichroic) and even iridescence in some cases. The term dichroic is used more precisely when labelling interference filters for laboratory use. The earliest dichroic glass material first appeared in a few pieces of Roman glass from the 4th Century, and consists of a translucent glass containing colloidal gold and silver particles dispersed in the glass matrix in certain proportions so that the glass has the property of displaying a particular transmitted color and a completely different reflected color, as certain wavelengths of light either pass through or are reflected. In ancient dichroic glass such as the Lycurgus Cup the glass has a green color when lit from in front in reflected light, and another, purple-ish red, when lit from inside or behind. Modern dichroic glass is available as a result of materials research carried out by NASA and its contractors, who developed it for use in outer space. Few fragments of the original material prior to NASA’s discovery have survived, but it was also made in the Renaissance, particularly in Venice, though these are extremely rare. The skill needed to combine multiple ultra-thin layers of transparent oxides of such metals as titanium, chromium, aluminium, zirconium, magnesium, or silica was not commercially feasible until the invention of computers and high-precision equipment, as these layers must be vaporized by an electron beam in a vacuum chamber and then condensed on the surface of the glass in the form of a crystal structure. The finished glass can have as many as 30 to 50 layers of these materials, yet the thickness of the total coating can be approximately 30 to 35 millionths of an inch. A plate of dichroic glass can be fused with other glass in multiple firings, but due to variations in the firing process individual results can never be exactly predicted, so each and every single piece of fused dichroic glass is unique. Outside of its use in jewelry, art, and the space program, dichroic glass is used in various dichroic optical filters to select narrow bands of spectral colors, for example in fluorescence microscopy, LCD projectors, or 3D movies. The corporate headquarters of Amazon.com in Seattle, Washington incorporates dichroic glass into the exterior of its high-rise building, reflecting light into various colors that depend on the time of day, and the Museum at Prairiefire in Overland Park, Kansas which opened in May 2014 has the largest concentration of dichroic glass in the world, and is considered a work of art in and of itself. 

Great.