266. Skyphos

Condition

Good condition. Large fills have been added on the base.

Description

The lip is fire-polished and rounded, and it turns inward. The mastoid body rests, a little bit off-center, on a conical applied base. There is no pontil mark visible on the bottom of the base.

Two angular handles with two horizontal plates (M-shaped) have been applied on the lower part of the body and drawn up to the rim. Each handle starts as a flat band at lower body, goes up, and reaches the rim. There, it is bent at a right angle, continues horizontally, and is pressed to form a thumb-rest tab. Then it continues back down vertically and at mid-height is pressed, forming an angular shape; at the lower end, it is pinched to form a smaller tab, and finally it is attached to the body on the middle of the underlying band.

Comments and Comparanda

Glass skyphoi first appear in the second century BCE, and by the late first century BCE–early first century CE they were produced and decorated in several techniques, creating luxurious products. For examples of glass skyphoi in luxurious techniques, including molded mosaic, translucent monochrome, and colorless glass, see Oliver 1967, pp. 27–33. Cat. 82 represents a glass cameo example, probably the most luxurious extant vessel; see Harden et al. 1987, pp. 68–69, no. 31. An overview of Hellenistic glass skyphoi has been presented by Marie-Dominique Nenna (Nenna 1999a, pp. 100–101, with further bibliography).

Free-blown skyphoi, shallow and cylindrical or deep and ovoid, both on low base-rings, appear in the Tiberian period and continue into the Flavian. They are reminiscent of contemporaneous silver vessels (Zampieri 1998, p. 176, for further bibliography; Lapatin et al. 2014, pp. 46–51). They are a relatively widely distributed form known mostly in the western provinces of the Roman Empire (Isings 1957, pp. 55–56, form 39; Czurda-Ruth 1979, p. 56, no. 190; Van Lith 1991; Fünfschilling 2015, p. 372, form AR 97; Arveiller-Dulong and Nenna 2005, p. 199, nos. 544–545; Zampieri 1998, p. 178, no. 293; Sternini 1991, pp. 144–145, nos. 547, 577, plate 55), Greece (Davidson 1952, p. 103, nos. 649, 650, figs. 9, 10; Wright 1980, p. 163, no. 126, fig. 8; Weinberg and Stern 2009, pp. 54–55; ArchDelt B΄3 1965 [1968], p. 566, plate 710), and Asia Minor (Goldman 1950, p. 401, no. 14). Typically the ends of the angular handles are pinched flat, and on them a few glassblowers stamped their name with pincers and occasionally added their place of origin, Sidon (Stern 1995, pp. 68–69).

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

von Saldern et al. 1974, p. 194, no. 533.

Wight 2011, pp. 54, 57, fig. 33.

Exhibitions

Molten Color: Glassmaking in Antiquity (Malibu, 2006; 2007)

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