Condition
Mended.
Description
Vertical, slightly everted, rounded rim; deep body with convex sides tapering toward the flat bottom. A fine incised horizontal groove in the interior right below the rim.
The vessel is made of discoid mosaic tesserae of a single type composed of fine white rods (possibly 11) surrounded by translucent dark blue glass. Most tesserae have been fused almost vertically, probably as a result of the movement during the action of the slumping technique, so that the white rods appear elongated as short, wavy white threads in the dark-colored body of the vessel.
Comments and Comparanda
For the production technique, see the comments on cat. 86. On the different techniques and classes of mosaic glass present in the Getty collection, see comments on cat. 95.
For particular parallels, see the following: Grose, David Frederick. 1989. Early Ancient Glass: Core-Formed, Rod-Formed, and Cast Vessels and Objects from the Late Bronze Age to the Early Roman Empire, 1600 B.C. to A.D. 50. New York: Hudson Hills Press., p. 328, no. 546, ill. p. 233 (one of the two types of tesserae of that bowl is the one used exclusively in this vessel, that is, blue ground with numerous opaque white rods); Grose, David Frederick. 1989. Early Ancient Glass: Core-Formed, Rod-Formed, and Cast Vessels and Objects from the Late Bronze Age to the Early Roman Empire, 1600 B.C. to A.D. 50. New York: Hudson Hills Press., p. 330, no. 560, ill. p. 234, which is a shallow bowl with golden-yellow ground with white rods, the same concept in a different color (in addition, this bowl has in the interior three narrow, horizontal incised grooves: two in a band at the junction of the side and bottom, and a small one at the center of the bottom). For a ribbed bowl of the same-color mosaic tesserae, blue with white rods, see Grose, David Frederick. 1989. Early Ancient Glass: Core-Formed, Rod-Formed, and Cast Vessels and Objects from the Late Bronze Age to the Early Roman Empire, 1600 B.C. to A.D. 50. New York: Hudson Hills Press., p. 277, no. 285.
Provenance
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
Saldern von, Axel, Birgit Nolte, Peter La Baume, and Thea Elisabeth Haevernick. 1974. Gläser der Antike. Sammlung Erwin Oppenländer. Mainz: von Zabern., p. 115, no. 310.
Wight, Karol. 2011. Molten Color: Glassmaking in Antiquity. Los Angeles: J. Paul Getty Museum., pp. 2, 42, 44, fig. 1, fig. 23.
Exhibitions
Molten Color: Glassmaking in Antiquity (Malibu, 2005–2006; 2007; 2009–2010)
Gläser der Antike: Sammlung Erwin Oppenländer (Hamburg and Cologne, 1974–1975)