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115. Fragment of a Mosaic Glass Vessel

Accession Number 76.AF.70.23
Dimensions pres. H. 2.2, W. 1.8, Th. 0.3 cm; Wt. 3.36 g
Date Late first century BCE–early first century CE
Production Area Italy or possibly Egypt
Material Translucent dark blue and green and opaque white, red, yellow, and green 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

Fragment.

Description

Rim fragment. Wide flaring rim, rounded tip: the upper, convex part of what was probably a double convex bowl. In the body, three deformed florets are partly preserved in a translucent dark blue layer: (1) circular floret with a red central rod set in white, surrounded by green set in yellow spirals, surrounded by a white, a translucent light blue, and a white layer; (2) circular floret, whose central part is not preserved, the outer layers of which are yellow petals set in green, surrounded by a white layer; (3) stripes of green, light blue, red, and yellow, which may well be a severely deformed floret of type 1.

Comments and Comparanda

For the production technique, see comments on cat. 86. On cast, angular vessels, see comments on cat. 89. On the trade of small fragments of mosaic glass in nineteenth-century Rome and on the different techniques and classes of mosaic glass present in the Getty collection, see comments on cat. 95.

Provenance

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

Bibliography

Unpublished

Exhibitions

None