Condition
Almost fully preserved; part of the rim is replaced. Milky white cloudy weathering on large areas of the interior.
Description
Fire-polished, flaring rim; short neck; biconical, pointed body, which is tooled to form a thick, discoid base stand. Two trails of glass are attached under the rim, looped six times against the body, and end on the upper body area.
The base is flat on the lower side and convex on the upper, indicating that it was probably made by pressing the entire vessel on a flat surface—i.e., the marver—while the blowpipe was still attached to the rim, an assumption corroborated by the fact that on the bottom there is no pontil mark visible.
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, with the greatest distribution from the second quarter of the second to the mid-third century. It was used mainly in western Europe and mostly for tableware, although bottles and unguentaria appear in decolorized glass as well (Foy, Danièle, Françoise Labaune-Jean, Caroline Leblond, Chantal Martin Pruvot, Marie-Thérèse Marty, Claire Massart, Claudine Munier, Laudine Robin, Janick Roussel-Ode, and Bernard Gratuze. 2019. Verres incolores de l’antiquité́ romaine en Gaule et aux marges de la Gaule. Archaeopress Roman archaeology 42. Oxford: Archaeopress., vol. 1, pp. xiii–xvii; Stern, Eva Marianne. 2020. “A Major Work on Colourless Glass in Roman Gaul.” Journal of Roman Archaeology 33: 769–774., pp. 769–774). This particular flask form appears in the western provinces (Foy, Danièle, Françoise Labaune-Jean, Caroline Leblond, Chantal Martin Pruvot, Marie-Thérèse Marty, Claire Massart, Claudine Munier, Laudine Robin, Janick Roussel-Ode, and Bernard Gratuze. 2019. Verres incolores de l’antiquité́ romaine en Gaule et aux marges de la Gaule. Archaeopress Roman archaeology 42. Oxford: Archaeopress., vol. 2. p. 188, form IN 185; Foy, Danièle, and Marie Dominique Nenna. 2001. Tout feu, tout sable: Mille ans de verre antique dans le midi de la France, exh. cat. Aix-en-Provence: Édisud., p. 155, no. 201; Beretta, Marco, and Giovanni Di Pasquale. 2004. Vitrum: Il vetro fra arte e scienza nel mondo Romano. Florence: Giunti., p. 205, no. 1.16); plain examples without handles appear also in the first century CE (Scatozza Höricht, Lucia Amalia. 2012. L’instrumentum vitreum di Pompei. Rome: Arachne., p. 140, no. 11294A, plate XXVIII; Larese, Annamaria. 2004. Vetri antichi del Veneto. Corpus delle collezioni del vetro in Venezia 8. Venice: Comitato Nazionale Italiano, AIHV., no. 393, plate XI; Antonaras, Anastassios. 2012. Fire and Sand: Ancient Glass in the Princeton University Art Museum. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press., p. 214, nos. 323–324).
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. 207, no. 585.
Exhibitions
Molten Color: Glassmaking in Antiquity (Malibu, 2005–2006; 2007; 2009–2010)
Gläser der Antike: Sammlung Erwin Oppenländer (Hamburg and Cologne, 1974–1975)