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Catalogue

128. Fragment of a Mosaic Glass Vessel

Accession Number 2003.258.3
Dimensions L. 3.2, W. 3.1, est. Diam. body 8.0 cm; Wt. 4.10 g
Date Late first century BCE–early first century CE
Production Area Italy or Egypt
Material Opaque green, yellow, and white; translucent blue; and transparent pinkish 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

Slightly concave body fragment of a mosaic vessel, possibly a bowl. Consists of two kinds of tesserae with ribbed decoration of white, blue, green, and yellow glass: (1) opaque green and yellow bands divided by a thin white layer; (2) a central white band flanked by transparent pinkish, white, and wide dark blue bands. In two cases the way the tesserae were fused on the former mold made the blue band appear to be turquoise.

Comments and Comparanda

For the production technique, see comments on cat. 86. 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. This bowl belongs to a small class of Striped Mosaic ware made of short stripes of composite canes, which are very close in terms of colors and combinations of colors to the parallel-row pattern glass (see cat. 127). It has been plausibly proposed by David Grose (, p. 253) that they are made of the leftover clippings of the canes used for the production of the more numerous Parallel-Row class. They are mostly found in Italy and neighboring regions and are made exclusively of cut short lengths of canes placed and fused next to each other and then sagged over a former mold. On the sagging technique, see , pp. 68–69. Both shallow and deep bowls as well as pyxides were produced with this technique. For general information on the class and parallels, see , pp. 252–253, 295–301, nos. 368–389, 393–397.

Provenance

Pierre Mavrogordato, Greek, 1870–1948 (Berlin, Germany); by 1974–1988, Erwin Oppenländer, 1901–1988 (Waiblingen, Germany), by inheritance to his son, Gert Oppenländer, 1988; 1988–2003, Gert Oppenländer (Waiblingen, Germany), sold to the J. Paul Getty Museum, 2003

Bibliography

, p. 123, no. 332; p. 121, plate no. 332.

Exhibitions

Molten Color: Glassmaking in Antiquity (Malibu, 2005–2006; 2007; 2009–2010)

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