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Catalogue

27. Alabastron

Accession Number 2003.192
Dimensions H. 13.5, Diam. rim 3.0, max. Diam. 2.5 cm; Wt. 67.15 g
Date Possibly fourth–first centuries BCE, quite probably nineteenth or twentieth century CE
Production Area Eastern Mediterranean
Material Translucent purple and opaque yellow and white glass
Modeling Technique and Decoration Core-formed; applied lugs, and unmarvered and marvered threads
View in Collection

Condition

Mended; some fills. Whitish core remains in the interior.

Description

Translucent purple body; opaque yellow and white decoration. Wide, flaring, almost horizontal rim; long cylindrical neck; almost nonexistent shoulder; cylindrical body; mildly rounded bottom. Two fine coils applied first below the shoulders, then bent, and attached lower on the body form two opposing ring handles.

An unmarvered yellow thread is wound around the rim. A marvered white thread is spirally wound from the bottom to the rim 25 times and dragged 10 times upward and downward, forming a feather pattern.

Comments and Comparanda

On core-formed alabastra of this period, see comments on cat. 22. No exact parallels have been located. The rim is part of the same mass and not an added-on rim-disk. The handles do not look like the usual ones for form I:3A, and they are made of translucent, bubbly glass. The body fits well with second–first-century BCE products, while the handles seem to imitate duck-shaped handles of the fourth century BCE.

It is not easy to date this vase precisely; it was difficult for the authors of the 1974 catalogue of the Oppenländer collection to assign a narrow date, and rather they dated it more vaguely between the fourth and the first century BCE.

Chemical analyses conducted by the GCI scientist Dr. Monica Ganio have shown that the glass of the body does not correspond to other core-formed vessels and it is very rich in zinc, providing another indication that it may have been made in Europe in the nineteenth or twentieth century CE.

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

, p. 73, no. 189; p. 61, plate no. 189.

Exhibitions

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

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