Condition
Partly preserved. The surface bears iridescent patches and pitting. The entire neck, excluding a small fragment on the rim, is a restoration.
Description
Cylindrical neck; pear-shaped body; flattened base. The restoration has added to the end of the preserved cylindrical neck an outward-splayed mouth and a lip folded inward.
The vessel is made of blue and purple rods flanked and partly lined by white layers, making some of the purple appear as lavender and most of the blue as turquoise. In total there seem to be 20–21 rods of glass, interchanging wide purple and turquoise, flanked by thin white ones, which were fused side by side and then slumped to assume the pear shape of the body.
Comments and Comparanda
On slumped and blown polychrome vessels, see comments on cat. 148. Examples of other pear-shaped and globular slumped and blown vessels include finds from Aquileia (Calvi, M. C. 1968. I vetri romani del Museo di Aquileia. Aquileia: Associazione Nazionale per Aquileia., p. 48, nos. 86–88) and Zadar (Ravagnan, Giovanna Luisa. 1994. Vetri antichi del Museo Vetrario di Murano. Collezioni dello Stato. Corpus delle collezioni archeologiche del vetro nel Veneto 1. Venice: Comitato Nazionale Italiano, AIHV., p. 66, no. 104, p. 80, no. 140); several more unprovenanced examples are in museum and private collections: Hayes, John W. 1975. Roman and Pre-Roman Glass in the Royal Ontario Museum. Toronto: Royal Ontario Museum., p. 28, no. 80, plate 192; Auth, Susan Handler. 1976. Ancient Glass at the Newark Museum from the Eugene Schaefer Collection of Antiquities. Newark, NJ: Newark Museum., pp. 56–57, nos. 50–52; Matheson, Susan B. 1980. Ancient Glass in the Yale University Art Gallery. New Haven, CT: Yale University Art Gallery., p. 26, no. 68; Oliver, Andrew, Jr. 1980. Ancient Glass in the Carnegie Museum of Natural History, Pittsburgh. Pittsbourgh, PA: Carnegie Institute., p. 49, no. 29; Ancient Glass. Formerly the Kofler-Truniger Collection, March 5–6, 1985, sale cat. London: Christie’s., pp. 79–80, nos. 134, 136, pp. 84–85, nos. 146–148; 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. 339–341, nos. 608–616; The Alfred Wolkenberg Collection of Ancient Glass, July 9, 1991, sale cat. London: Christie’s, Manson & Woods Ltd,., p. 36, no. 97; Kunina, Nina. 1997. The Art Treasures of Russia: Ancient Glass in the Hermitage Collection. St. Petersburg: State Hermitage/ARS Publishers., p. 269, nos. 101–102; Whitehouse, David B. 1997. Roman Glass in the Corning Museum of Glass, vol. 1. Corning, NY: Corning Museum of Glass., pp. 39–40, nos. 34–35; ex Kofler-Truniger collection (Kunz, Martin, ed. 1981. 3000 Jahre Glaskunst: Von der Antike bis zum Jugendstil, exh. cat. Lucerne: Kunstmuseum., p. 70, no. 209), sold at Christie’s June 6, 2021, lot 59 [https://www.christies.com/en/lot/lot-6327009]; ex Plesch collection, sold at Christie’s April 1, 2014, lot 5 [https://www.christies.com/lot/lot-5776243]; Lightfoot, Christopher S. 2021. “Ancient Glass in the Moore Collection.” In Collecting Inspiration: Edward C. Moore at Tiffany & Co., ed. Medill Higgins Harvey, 112–133. New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art., p. 125, no. 7aA. Cat. 154 is very similar in terms of the colors used.
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. 359.
Exhibitions
Gläser der Antike: Sammlung Erwin Oppenländer (Hamburg and Cologne, 1974–1975)