Skip to Main Content
119/631
of
Catalogue

108. Fragment of a Mosaic Glass Vessel

Accession Number 2004.26.3
Dimensions L. 2.5, W. 4.1 cm; Wt. 3.84 g
Date First century BCE–first century CE
Production Area Italy or possibly Egypt
Material Translucent purple and opaque yellow, white, and red glass
Modeling Technique and Decoration Made from a polychrome disk-shaped blank assembled from fused-together lengths and sections of round mosaic canes; slumped; applied base; rotary polished
View in Collection

Condition

Fragment.

Description

Mildly curving body fragment consisting of composite mosaic tesserae, with florets of a single type: central red rod set in one yellow and one red layer, surrounded by a layer of seven red petals outlined in yellow, and all set in a composite layer of nine white rods, each set in translucent purple glass.

Comments and Comparanda

For the production technique, see comments on cat. 86. On the trade of small fragments of mosaic glass in the nineteenth century and on the different techniques and classes of mosaic glass present in the Getty collection, see comments on cat. 95.

Provenance

Pierre Mavrogordato, Greek, 1870–1948 (Berlin, Germany); by 1974–1988, Erwin Oppenländer, 1901–1988 (Waiblingen, Germany), by inheritance to his daughter, Ingrid Reisser, 1988; 1988–2004, Ingrid Reisser (Böblingen, Germany), sold to the J. Paul Getty Museum, 2004

Bibliography

, p. 123, no. 332.

Exhibitions

Gläser der Antike: Sammlung Erwin Oppenländer (Hamburg and Cologne, 1974–1975)