251. Bowl

Condition

Intact. Small parts covered with brownish weathering and iridescence.

Description

Cracked-off and ground, mildly flaring rim; hemispherical body, standing on a flat bottom. Beneath the rim is a fine, horizontal wheel-cut groove. At mid-body height is another groove, below which is arranged a row of 26 wide, oval, wheel-cut incisions. Further below is a row of 11 horizontally arranged, oval wheel-cut incisions flanked by two grooves. Six radiantly arranged oval wheel-cut incisions form a star-shaped motif at the center of the bottom.

Comments and Comparanda

The vessel is made of decolorized glass, which was much more valuable and expensive than ordinary greenish glass. In Roman times glass decolorized with manganese or antimony appears from the last third of the first century CE until the beginning of the fourth century CE, but it was most in fashion and had its highest distribution levels from the second quarter of the second to the mid-third century, which includes the production period of this bowl. It was used mainly in western Europe and mostly for tableware, although bottles and unguentaria appear in colorless glass as well (Foy et al. 2019, vol. 1, pp. xiii–xvii; Stern 2020, pp. 769–774). On the shape and the decoration, see comments on cat. 250.

Provenance

Pierre Mavrogordato, Greek, 1870–1948 (Berlin, Germany); 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. 185, no. 510.

Exhibitions

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