Glass art in Hungary dates back to Roman times, when the Trans-Danubia region was Pannonia Province of the Empire. The vasi diacretum, found near the town of Savaria, or Sopianae, have for long been unearthed in excavations and have inspired glassmakers to copy the noble forms since the Renaissance and Baroque periods. At the birth of Hungarian glass art, Leó Pantocsek also wanted to copy Roman forms and did everything he could to replicate the iridescent surface of glass lying in the ground.

Several centuries later, the glassmaking centres of the Romans were revived in the Middle Ages as the glassmaking centres of Hungary in the Mecsek and Bakony. This shows that glass art is capable of miraculous resurrections, stretching across ages, time and nations. Sopianae, and later Pécs, the centre of humanism in Hungary, attracted the finest Italian glass in the Middle Ages, so that in the 18th century German settlers also set up their glassworks in this area. Today this region is still one of the intellectual centres of contemporary Hungarian glass art.