Condition
Intact. In some areas a black crust in the interior.
Description
In-folded, tubular, flaring rim; short neck; ovular body compressed at four spots along its greatest diameter, thereby acquiring an irregular polygonal shape. Stands on a concave bottom. No signs of pontil mark are visible.
Comments and Comparanda
A well-known form ascribed to the production of fourth-century eastern workshops is the group of relatively small flasks with tubular, in-folded rim and a very wide, short, cylindrical neck leading to a pear-shaped body that almost always bears four indentations that render the body squarish (Stern, Eva Marianne. 1977. Ancient Glass at the Fondation Custodia (Collection Frits Lugt) Paris. Archaeologia Traiectina 12. Groningen: Wolfers-Noordhoff., pp. 100–101, no. 28; Barkóczi, László. 1988. Pannonische Glasfunde in Ungarn. Budapest: Akadémiai Kiadó., p. 151, form 131; Roffia, Elisabetta. 1993. I vetri antichi delle Civiche raccolte archeologiche di Milano. Milan: Comune di Milano., p. 108; Antonaras, Anastassios. 2017. Glassware and Glassworking in Thessaloniki: First Century BC–Sixth Century AD. Oxford: Archaeopress., p. 133, form 102). Analogous items have been located in the following sites and museums: Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto (Hayes, John W. 1975. Roman and Pre-Roman Glass in the Royal Ontario Museum. Toronto: Royal Ontario Museum., pp. 39, 66, plate 12, no. 153); Mainz (Harter, Gabriele, Römische Gläser des Landesmuseums Mainz. Wiesbaden: Reichert, 1999., pp. 104, 246, form D21b, no. 726, plate 30); Syria: Bosra (Dussart, Odile. 1998. Le verre en Jordanie et en Syrie du sud. Bibliothèque archéologique et historique 152. Beirut: Institut Français d’Archéologie du Proche-Orient., p. 92, form BVII.2423, plate 18); Israel: Samaria (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. 409, no. 5, fig. 94/5); and Jordan: Mahayy (Dussart, Odile. 1998. Le verre en Jordanie et en Syrie du sud. Bibliothèque archéologique et historique 152. Beirut: Institut Français d’Archéologie du Proche-Orient., p. 92 n. 7).
The flask was acquired with a leather-covered lidded basket, and both are part of a group of miscellaneous objects once associated with a painted wood sarcophagus (Getty Museum, 82.AP.75). The absence of sediments on the glass vessel and the shape of the basket, which does not correspond to that of the flask but quite faithfully renders a first-century mold-blown pyxis like cat. 165, suggest that they were not an original assemblage.
Provenance
1982, Galerie Nefer (Zurich, Switzerland), sold to the J. Paul Getty Museum, 1982
Bibliography
Unpublished
Exhibitions
None