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Catalogue

113. Fragment of a Mosaic Glass Vessel

Accession Number 76.AF.70.17
Dimensions L. 1.1, W. 1.8, Th. 0.3 cm; Wt. 0.71 g
Date Ninth–tenth centuries CE
Production Area Eastern Mediterranean
Material Opaque red, yellow, white, and green and translucent blue glass
Modeling Technique and Decoration Made from a polychrome disk-shaped blank assembled from fused-together lengths and sections of round mosaic canes; slumped; rotary polished
View in Collection

Condition

Body fragment.

Description

Small, curved body fragment, with irregular polygonal florets in dark blue background. Each floret has a central red rod, set in white, green, and yellow layers, surrounded by a white layer with red triangular rays in it.

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.

The shape of the tesserae, with the dentate band, is not present among Roman mosaic vessels. For a small piece of glass that was made of tesserae probably identical to those of this fragment and that was ground in the shape of a human incisor set in a gold frame used as a pendant dated to the tenth century CE, see , pp. 186–187, no. 246. The mosaic technique was revived for a brief period during the ninth and tenth centuries, creating what was probably a very limited and clearly costly production line whose creations were nevertheless widely distributed from Egypt to Iran (, pp. 147–153; , pp. 86–87).

Provenance

By 1976, Bruce McNall, donated to the J. Paul Getty Museum, 1976

Bibliography

Unpublished

Exhibitions

None