A curator at a Japanese museum has accidentally dropped and broken a 2,200-year-old glass artefact.

The relic was on loan from another museum.

The antique was made of 46 cylinder-shaped pieces of sky blue glass threaded together, and was unearthed 20 years ago in south-west Japan.

The piece was being moved when the curator of a museum in western Japan dropped it from a height of about 70 centimetres.

Despite landing on a carpeted floor more than 10 of the glass pieces shattered.