Condition
Mended, fills in several parts of the body.
Description
Translucent dark blue ground; opaque white, yellow, and turquoise décor. Flattened, horizontal rim with rounded edge; wide, cylindrical neck, slightly tapering toward the body; almost horizontal rounded shoulder; squat, bulbous body; tall, conical footed base with rounded edge. On the upper body, right below the shoulder, three dark blue loop handles are arranged at equal distances.
A marvered turquoise thread is wound around the rim. Around the neck and on the lower part of the body, three marvered threads—opaque white, yellow, and turquoise—are spirally wound and dragged upward, forming a festooned pattern. A marvered turquoise thread encircles the base.
Comments and Comparanda
Krateriskoi are one of the most characteristic Egyptian vessel forms. This particular shape and the presence of handles date it to the reigns of Tuthmosis IV, when handles were added to krateriskoi, and Amenhotep III, when they were most popular and perfectly shaped, ca. 1397–1350 BCE (Stern, Eva Marianne, and Birgit Schlick–Nolte. 1994. Early Glass of the Ancient World, 1600 B.C.–A.D. 50: Ernesto Wolf Collection. Ostfildern: Gerd Hatje., pp. 130–131). Furthermore, the turquoise thread around the rim ascribes it to a particular workshop that specialized in decoration of festoon patterns, among which this feature exclusively appears (Nolte, Birgit. 1968. Die Glasgefäße im alten Ägypten. Münchner ägyptologische Studien 14. Berlin: Hessling., workshop 2a, plate VII:12; Nolte, Birgit. 1968. Die Glasgefäße im alten Ägypten. Japanese ed. Trans. T. Tanniichi and K. Kondoh. 2nd ed. rev. Kyoto: Okayama., p. 95, plate 7.9, 12). For a discussion of this workshop, known as “Workshop 2,” see cat. 1.
Comparanda include finds kept in the Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe Hamburg, the Hermitage St. Petersburg, the Museum of Cairo, and the Louvre (Nolte, Birgit. 1968. Die Glasgefäße im alten Ägypten. Münchner ägyptologische Studien 14. Berlin: Hessling., workshop 2a, p. 93, no. 12, plate VIII:14, 16, 17, 19); Württembergisches Museum Stuttgart (Stern, Eva Marianne, and Birgit Schlick–Nolte. 1994. Early Glass of the Ancient World, 1600 B.C.–A.D. 50: Ernesto Wolf Collection. Ostfildern: Gerd Hatje., pp. 130–131, no. 5); Toledo Museum of Art (Grose, David Frederick. 1989. Early Ancient Glass: Core-Formed, Rod-Formed, and Cast Vessels and Objects from the Late Bronze Age to the Early Roman Empire, 1600 B.C. to A.D. 50. New York: Hudson Hills Press., pp. 60–61, nos. 7–8); and a similar vessel is in the British Museum (Tatton-Brown, Veronica, and Carol Andrews. 1991. “Before the Invention of Glassblowing.” In Five Thousand Years of Glass, ed. Hugh Tait, 21–61. London: British Museum Press., pp. 30–31, fig. 26).
Provenance
By 1965, Private Collection (Stuttgart, Germany); by 1968–1988, Erwin Oppenländer, 1901–1988 (Waiblingen, Germany), by inheritance to his daughter, Ingrid Reisser, 1988; 1988–2004, Ingrid Reisser (Böblingen, Germany), sold to the J. Paul Getty Museum, 2004
Note: described in Nolte 1968 as found in a Mycenaean grave in Cyprus: “aus einem myken. Grab auf Zypern”
Bibliography
Möller, Lise Lotte. 1965. Ägyptische Kunst aus der Zeit des Königs Echnaton, exh. cat. Hamburg: Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe., pp. 33–34, no. 76.
Nolte, Birgit. 1968. Die Glasgefäße im alten Ägypten. Münchner ägyptologische Studien 14. Berlin: Hessling., p. 93, no. 15, plate VIII:15; reference to the export of glass p. 93, no. 15, plate 8, pp. 15ff. and 89.
Saldern von, Axel, Birgit Nolte, Peter La Baume, and Thea Elisabeth Haevernick. 1974. Gläser der Antike. Sammlung Erwin Oppenländer. Mainz: von Zabern., p. 18, no. 1.
Exhibitions
Gläser der Antike: Sammlung Erwin Oppenländer (Hamburg and Cologne, 1974–1975)