Condition
Mended; small fill on the bottom; weathering on the interior.
Description
Fire-polished, flaring rim; wide, short neck; pear-shaped body; slightly concave bottom. Free-blown ribbon jar of eight alternating vertical lengths of two composite canes: four are dark blue and four turquoise (appearing purplish in transmitted light), each one of them flanked by translucent white glass. All canes begin on one side of the rim and continue down and around to terminate at the same point on the other side of the rim. The canes were assembled and thereafter free-blown to achieve the shape.
Comments and Comparanda
Slumped and blown color-band vessels represent a separate family of mosaic glass. These vessels are small- or medium-sized flasks or unguentaria. They are made of bands or sections of mosaic canes that were fused to a mass, which was gathered toward the end of the production on the blowpipe, and then formed using free-blowing. This development is very important for the history of glassworking, because it illustrates the transition from the earlier, Hellenistic and Roman technique of forming glass vessels by slumping a mass of glass over or into a mold to the free-blowing that revolutionized the entire glass industry and dates to the Augustan or Julio-Claudian period. The distribution pattern of provenanced finds indicates that the production center was probably in the western Mediterranean, possibly in Italy (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. 261–262).
Small globular and pear-shaped glass jars were popular in the first century CE, mostly made with the free-blowing technique (Isings, Clasina. 1957. Roman Glass from Dated Finds. Groningen: Wolters., pp. 88–89, variants of forms 68; Fünfschilling, Sylvia. 2015. Die römischen Gläser aus Augst und Kaiseraugst. Kommentierter Formenkatalog und ausgewählte Neufunde 1981–2010 aus Augusta Raurica. Forschungen in Augst 51. Augst: Augusta Raurica., p. 391, forms AR 114, AR 115; Antonaras, Anastassios. 2017. Glassware and Glassworking in Thessaloniki: First Century BC–Sixth Century AD. Oxford: Archaeopress., p. 131–132, forms 98, 99). This jar has the same shape as the aforementioned monochrome vessels, but it is rendered in a different technique that led to the striking, polychrome creation.
Provenance
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
Saldern von, Axel, Birgit Nolte, Peter La Baume, and Thea Elisabeth Haevernick. 1974. Gläser der Antike. Sammlung Erwin Oppenländer. Mainz: von Zabern., p. 132, no. 363.
Exhibitions
Molten Color: Glassmaking in Antiquity (Malibu, 2005–2006; 2007; 2009–2010)
Gläser der Antike: Sammlung Erwin Oppenländer (Hamburg and Cologne, 1974–1975)