Condition
Intact.
Description
Rounded, fire-polished, flaring rim; cylindrical neck with tooling marks. The body is in the shape of a trilobed cluster of grapes and is covered with 12 rows of large hemispherical knobs imitating grapes. Formed in a bipartite mold; vertical seam hardly noticeable among the knobs on the surface.
Comments and Comparanda
Mold-blown vessels in the shape of wine grapes are a relatively widespread flask form, and they appear in three distinct periods of Roman history. The oldest examples reproduce the bunch with greater naturalism, as in this vessel and cat. 198 (Isings, Clasina. 1957. Roman Glass from Dated Finds. Groningen: Wolters., p. 94, form 78e; Antonaras, Anastassios. 2017. Glassware and Glassworking in Thessaloniki: First Century BC–Sixth Century AD. Oxford: Archaeopress., pp. 142–143, form 118); they appear as early as the third quarter of the first century and continue into the early second century, and it has been assumed that they are Syro-Palestinian products (Stern, Eva Marianne. 1995. The Toledo Museum of Art. Roman Mold-Blown Glass: The First through Sixth Centuries. Rome: “L’Erma” di Bretschneider., p. 180). The later examples are dated to the end of the second century, and render the grape more schematically. Two-handled examples appear particularly in the northwestern provinces of the Roman Empire—probably locally produced there—in addition to the handleless variant that prevails in the east (Isings, Clasina. 1957. Roman Glass from Dated Finds. Groningen: Wolters., pp. 108–109, form 91a; Stern, Eva Marianne. 1995. The Toledo Museum of Art. Roman Mold-Blown Glass: The First through Sixth Centuries. Rome: “L’Erma” di Bretschneider., pp. 190–191, no. 119, with detailed bibliography). Finally, there is a third subgroup comprising vessels with body modeled like a grape bunch standing on a discoid base. They are mainly found and were probably made in the Syro-Palestinian region, and they are ascribed to the third century on the basis of stylistic features (Stern, Eva Marianne. 1995. The Toledo Museum of Art. Roman Mold-Blown Glass: The First through Sixth Centuries. Rome: “L’Erma” di Bretschneider., pp. 191–195, nos. 120–128). Other comparanda include the following: Isings, Clasina. 1957. Roman Glass from Dated Finds. Groningen: Wolters., pp. 108–109, form 91a; Auth, Susan Handler. 1976. Ancient Glass at the Newark Museum from the Eugene Schaefer Collection of Antiquities. Newark, NJ: Newark Museum., p. 72, no. 71; Stern, Eva Marianne. 1995. The Toledo Museum of Art. Roman Mold-Blown Glass: The First through Sixth Centuries. Rome: “L’Erma” di Bretschneider., pp. 190–191, no. 119; Whitehouse, David B. 2001. Roman Glass in the Corning Museum of Glass, vol. 2. Corning, NY: Corning Museum of Glass., p. 125, no. 630; La Baume, Peter, and Jan Willem Salomonson. 1976. Römische Kleinkunst: Sammlung Karl Löffler. Wissenschaftliche Kataloge des Römisch-Germanischen Museums 3. Cologne: Bachem., p. 38, no. 76, plate 8:4; Moirin, Anna, and Véronique Arveiller-Dulong. 2010. “Les flacons en forme de grappe de raisin. Essai de typologie.” In D’Ennion au Val Saint-Lambert: Le verre soufflé-moulé. Actes des 23ème Rencontres de l’Association Française pour l’Archéologie du Verre. Colloque international, Bruxelles-Namur, 17–19 octobre 2008, ed. Chantal Fontaine-Hodiamont, Catherine Bourguignon, and Simon Laevers, 215–228. Scientia Artis 5. Brussels: Institut royal du patrimoine artistique., pp. 215–217, figs. 3–4.
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. 173, no. 473.
Exhibitions
Gläser der Antike: Sammlung Erwin Oppenländer (Hamburg and Cologne, 1974–1975)