233. One-Handled Cup / Modiolus

Condition

Mended; small body parts are missing.

Description

Fire-polished, flaring rim; partly lopsided, conical mouth; bell-shaped body; pushed-in, tubular base-ring; flat bottom.

A thick white thread is applied flush on the rim. The body is covered with widely spaced light blue, white, and a few yellow specks, giving the impression of a mosaic vessel. A massive, ridged strap handle made of undecorated dark blue glass is attached on the body and on the mouth area, bent to form a wide ring.

Comments and Comparanda

Modioli, a type of relatively wide and deep, one-handled cups, were a quite widespread form of vessel in the late first–early second centuries CE (Isings 1957, pp. 52–53, form 37; Haevernick [1978] 1981, pp. 367–374). Literary sources and pictorial testimony indicate that modioli were used as drinking cups, although the name is a diminutive of modius, a measuring vessel (Hilgers 1969, pp. 67–68, 224–225). Most examples have straight walls and bodies that are cylindrical or conical tapering toward the base-ring, like cat. 234. A folded tubular flange in the form of a figure eight at the transition from the vertical body to the rim is often present, but not among the JPGM examples. A single wide, circular strap handle is attached to the upper part of the body. The form is considered a western, probably Italian, product, but it is not uncommon in eastern parts of the empire as well. Several variant shapes have been identified, like this bell-shaped vessel, which suggest that modioli were produced in a number of workshops. For direct comparanda of this vessel, see Kunina 1997, pp. 149, 291, no. 185; Whitehouse 1998a, pp. 42–43, no. 101; Arveiller-Dulong and Nenna 2005, p. 295, no. 875; Lazar 2003, p. 58, fig. 19. In general for colored modioli, see Haevernick [1978] 1981, pp. 372–373.

Provenance

By 1972–1988, 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

JGS 1972, p. 153, no. 9, ill.

von Saldern et al. 1974, p. 139, no. 390.

Wight 2011, pp. 62, 64, fig. 39.

Exhibitions

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

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