This paper presents an explorative study on the machining of diffractive optical elements (DOEs) in transparent materials using a femtosecond laser source. A simple form of DOE, a binary phase grating with a period of 20.85 mu m (sigma = 0.5 mu m), a groove depth and width of 0.7 mu m (sigma = 0.2 mu m) and 8.8 mu m (sigma = 0.5 mu m) respectively, was successfully machined in BK7. The topographic characteristics were measured by white light interferometry and scanning electron microscopy (SEM). The processing was carried out on high precision stages with an ultrafast fibre laser (350 fs) emitting a 343 nm pulse focused onto the sample with a stationary microscope objective. A diffracted efficiency of 27%, obtained with a spectro goniometer, was corroborated by the theoretical results obtained by the Fourier modal method (FMM), taking into account the measured topographic values. These encouraging results demonstrate that high-speed femtosecond laser manufacturing of DOE in bulk glasses can be achieved, opening the way to rapid prototyping of multi-layered-DOEs. (C) 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.