270. Flask

Condition

Fully preserved. Surface incrustation on interior and underside; some whitish iridescence on exterior; a few cracks and chipping.

Description

Fire-polished rim; conical mouth; cylindrical neck; globular body; mildly concave bottom. A blue coil circles once, forming an applied base-ring and continues toward the center of the bottom, where it forms a central circle 1.7 cm wide.

Two fine blue threads are wound around the neck and at the transition from mouth to neck. The vessel has snake-thread floral decoration realized with applied threads in blue and white glass; on one side the blue motifs prevail, and on the other the white. The narrow, undulating parts of the threads, which represent stems and stalks, are left undecorated. The wider parts of the threads, representing oval, pointed leaves, bear cross-hatched, impressed decoration.

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 is exactly the production period of this flask. 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). This particular flask form appears mainly in the western provinces but occasionally in the Mediterranean region as well; plain examples appear from the middle of the second century CE, and those with snake-thread decoration from the late second to the middle of the third century (Foy et al. 2019, vol. 2, pp. 242–244, forms IN 242–243).

Snake-thread vessels were first produced in the late second century CE in the eastern Mediterranean, and the technique was transported soon after to the western provinces, where at least two workshops were active, one in Rhineland and the other in Pannonia (Harden et al. 1987, pp. 105–108; Stern 2001, p. 138; Dévai 2019, pp. 325–329). The vessels are grouped stylistically: those with freely applied trails, and the “flower and bird” variety, named after its representations. Eastern examples are made of and mostly decorated with colorless glass, the trails bearing often crosshatched lines, and the “flower and bird” pattern is found only among them (Barag 1969, pp. 55–66). Colored trails appear in the decoration of western products much more often, and the trails are usually smooth; when they are not, they bear oblique lines, not crosshatching.

This vessel presents features of products from both regions. The shape of the body finds its closest parallels in Cologne (Fremersdorf 1959, p. 42, N 119, plate 20; p. 49, N 6049, plate 48); the decoration, in “flower and bird” style with crosshatched leaves, however, locates the vessel quite securely in an eastern workshop.

Provenance

1992, the Merrin Gallery (New York, New York), sold to Barbara and Lawrence Fleischman, 1992; 1992–1996, Barbara Fleischman and Lawrence Fleischman, American, 1925–1997 (New York, New York), sold to the J. Paul Getty Museum, 1996

Bibliography

True and Hamma 1994, pp. 331–332, no. 174 [Karol White].

Report 97–98, p. 68.

JPGM Handbook Antiquities 1st ed., p. 208.

JPGM Handbook 7th ed., p. 47, ill.

JPGM Handbook Antiquities rev. ed., p. 218.

Wight 2011, pp. 62, 66, 97, fig. 41.

Exhibitions

A Passion for Antiquities: Ancient Art from the Collection of Barbara and Lawrence Fleischman (Malibu, 1994–1995; Cleveland, 1995)

Ancient Art from the Permanent Collection (Los Angeles, 1999–2004)