Condition
Fragment; part of the rim and upper body preserved.
Description
Deep hemispherical bowl. The body is formed by bent, twisted ribbon canes arranged in pairs of the following two types: (1) reticella of two yellow threads twisted around a colorless ground; (2) twisted cane of a white thread wound around purple ground. The rim is finished with an applied twisted coil of white and blue glass.
Comments and Comparanda
This bowl belongs to a relatively rare class of mosaic ware found mostly in Italy and neighboring regions. It is known as Network Mosaic, or reticella, and is made exclusively of cut lengths of single-network canes placed and fused next to each other and then sagged over a former mold. It is closely related to the striped mosaic wares with parallel-row pattern and appears in shallow and deep bowls and possibly in pyxides too. This type of reticella derives from a group of Hellenistic glass mosaic vessels where the stripes were spirally arranged, with known examples from the Canosa Group (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., pp. 189–191) and the Antikythera Group (Weinberg, Gladys D. 1965. “The Glass Vessels from the Antikythera Wreck.” Transactions of the American Philosophical Society 55, no.3: 30–39., pp. 38–39, nos. 10–11, figs. 20–25; Weinberg, Gladys D., and Murray C. McClellan. 1992. Glass Vessels in Ancient Greece: Their History Illustrated from the Collection of the National Archaeological Museum, Athens. Athens: Archaeological Receipt Fund., pp. 108–110, nos. 71–74; Avronidaki, Christina. 2012. “The Glassware.” In The Antikythera Shipwreck: The Ship, the Treasures, the Mechanism, exh. cat., ed. Nikolaos Kaltsas, Elena Vlachogianni, and Polyxeni Bouyia, 132–145. Athens: National Archaeological Museum., pp. 143–144, nos. 110–113, with all previous bibliography). Most published Roman examples are made of colorless canes wound spirally with one or two threads, and the rims are formed with an applied twisted cane, usually of an intense color, contrasting with the transparency of the body. The presence of an added twisted thread as a rim links these classes with Hellenistic glass vessels like cat. 118. For general information on the class and parallels, 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., pp. 253, 302–303, nos. 400–403, 405. In addition, published parallels are known from sites such as Vindonissa (dated to the Claudian or Neronian period; Berger, Ludwig. 1960. Römische Gläser aus Vindonissa. Veröffentlichungen der Gesellschaft Pro Vindonissa IV. Basel: Birkhäuser., pp. 9–13, nos. 4–5, plate 1), Cologne (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. 196, fig. 111), and Lebanon (Glass from the Ancient World: The Ray Winfield Smith Collection. 1957. Corning, NY: Corning Museum of Glass in the Corning Glass Center., pp. 88–89, no. 147 [not recorded in the checklist of later owners that was published in the Journal of Glass Studies 3 (1961): 19–153]), as well as in museum collections, including the Fitzwilliam Museum (Glass at the Fitzwilliam Museum. 1978. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press., p. 28, no. 45); the Museo Nazionale Romano (294080 [deep]), the Louvre (Arveiller-Dulong, Véronique, and Marie-Dominique Nenna. 2000. Les verres antiques du Musée du Louvre 1: Contenants à parfums en verre moulé sur noyau et vaisselle moulée: VIIe siècle avant J.-C.–Ier siècle après J.-C. Paris: Somogy., p. 149 and note 23), the Landesmuseum Württemberg (Stern, Eva Marianne, and Birgit Schlick–Nolte. 1994. Early Glass of the Ancient World, 1600 B.C.–A.D. 50: Ernesto Wolf Collection. Ostfildern: Gerd Hatje., p. 299), and the Corning Museum of Glass (Goldstein, Sidney M. 1979. Pre-Roman and Early Roman Glass in the Corning Museum of Glass. Corning, NY: Corning Museum of Glas., p. 32 and 193–195, nos. 523–528: 66.1.217: https://www.cmog.org/artwork/lace-mosaic-bowl-0 [shallow]; 59.1.566-3: https://www.cmog.org/artwork/fragment-laced-mosaic-bowl-0; 59.1.566-1: https://www.cmog.org/artwork/fragment-laced-mosaic-bowl-7; 59.1.566-9: https://www.cmog.org/artwork/fragment-laced-mosaic-bowl-8).
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
Saldern von, Axel, Birgit Nolte, Peter La Baume, and Thea Elisabeth Haevernick. 1974. Gläser der Antike. Sammlung Erwin Oppenländer. Mainz: von Zabern., p. 123, no. 332.
Exhibitions
Gläser der Antike: Sammlung Erwin Oppenländer (Hamburg and Cologne, 1974–1975)