Condition
Fully preserved; mended. Iridescence covers the interior and small areas on the ends of the handle and the mouth on the exterior.
Description
Fire-polished rim; trefoil mouth; cylindrical neck; globular body decorated at maximum diameter with five indentations; concave bottom. At the center of the bottom an annular pontil mark (W. 1.6 cm) is visible. A fine thread is spirally wound five times around the mouth. A fine coil handle is applied on the shoulder and terminates, folded, under the rim. A coil was wound twice around the lower neck; now only the wide wad of glass where it was applied on the vessel is preserved, along with a trace of the rest of its path.
Comments and Comparanda
Jugs with the same body shape are known from Syro-Palestinian sites, usually with smooth body and plain rim (Filarska, Barbara. 1952. Szkla Starozytne. Warsaw: Muzeum Narodowe., p. 153, no. 148, plate 33; Weinberg, Gladys D. 1988. Excavations at Jalame: Site of a Glass Factory in Late Roman Palestine. Columbia: University of Missouri Press., pp. 66–67, nos. 207–214; Crowfoot, Grace Mary. “Glass.” In J. W. Crowfoot, Grace Mary Crowfoot, and Kathleen M. Kenyon. Samaria-Sebaste: Reports of the Work of the Joint Expedition in 1931–1933 and of the British Expedition in 1935. Vol. 3, The Objects from Samaria, 403–422. London, 1957., p. 416, fig. 96:9; Matheson, Susan B. 1980. Ancient Glass in the Yale University Art Gallery. New Haven, CT: Yale University Art Gallery., p. 89, no. 241; Whitehouse, David B. 2001. Roman Glass in the Corning Museum of Glass, vol. 2. Corning, NY: Corning Museum of Glass., p. 183, nos. 726–727) or rarely with trefoil mouth (Auth, Susan Handler. 1976. Ancient Glass at the Newark Museum from the Eugene Schaefer Collection of Antiquities. Newark, NJ: Newark Museum., p. 208, no. 386), dated to the fourth or fifth century CE.
The indentation around the body is not noted among the parallels cited above. Glassworkers aimed to imitate hammered silver vessels, which were often decorated with smaller or bigger indentations from the first century CE, and during the fourth century this style became very popular for Syro-Palestinian products, mostly on small unguentaria, whose bodies were rendered practically square by these indentations (Antonaras, Anastassios. 2017. Glassware and Glassworking in Thessaloniki: First Century BC–Sixth Century AD. Oxford: Archaeopress., pp. 159–160, form 141, nos. 668–680, plate 41; Antonaras, Anastassios. 2012. Fire and Sand: Ancient Glass in the Princeton University Art Museum. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press., pp. 195–196, nos. 282–285, jars).
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
Saldern von, Axel, Birgit Nolte, Peter La Baume, and Thea Elisabeth Haevernick. 1974. Gläser der Antike. Sammlung Erwin Oppenländer. Mainz: von Zabern., p. 217, no. 630.
Exhibitions
Gläser der Antike: Sammlung Erwin Oppenländer (Hamburg and Cologne, 1974–1975)