154. Flask

Condition

Intact; small bits of weathering along a white cane on the exterior and throughout the interior.

Description

Folded in, flaring rim; cylindrical neck; pear-shaped body; flat bottom. Free-blown ribbon flask of 19 alternating vertical lengths of three composite canes: two are dark blue encased in colorless glass flanked by translucent white; the third is dark blue encased in colorless glass flanked by strips of alternating blue and yellow (to form green). All three canes begin on opposite sides 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

On slumped and blown vessels, see comments on cat. 148. For other slumped and blown polychrome vessels, see comparanda for cat. 152.

Provenance

Enrico Caruso, Italian, 1873–1921; 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

von Saldern et al. 1974, p. 132, no. 361.

Wight 2011, pp. 42, 49, fig. 28.

Exhibitions

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

Pompeii and the Roman Villa: Art and Culture around the Bay of Naples (Los Angeles, 2009)

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