361. Amphoriskos

Condition

One handle is missing. Areas with incrustation.

Description

Fire-polished rim; conical mouth; cylindrical neck; cylindrical body mildly tapering toward the flat, concave bottom. An annular pontil mark (W. 1.3, Th. 0.2 cm) is visible on the bottom. A fine thread is wound under the rim. Two opposing, smooth strap handles start on the tip of the shoulder, stretch vertically, and bend to the very top of the neck. The body of the second handle is not preserved.

The entire body is decorated with applied, curving, smooth threads of various thicknesses which form a snake-thread pattern. Two long-necked and long-legged birds, probably aquatic, are in profile turning to the right. In front of each bird is a fine thread that forms numerous loops stretching from shoulder to bottom, where it bends under and returns, ending on the shoulder.

Comments and Comparanda

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 such representations. Eastern examples are made of and mostly decorated with colorless glass; the trails often bear crosshatched lines, and the “flower and bird” pattern is found only among them (Barag 1969). Colored trails appear in the decoration of western products much more often, and the trails sometimes are not smooth when they bear single lines instead of crosshatched ones.

This form of small, undecorated amphoriskos (Isings 1957, pp. 157–158, form 127 miniature version) is known from sites in both eastern and western Roman provinces, and is dated to the third and fourth centuries (Antonaras 2017, p. 157, form 138, wherein further finds, mostly from the Balkans, are cited; also see Whitehouse 2001a, p. 184, no. 729). An almost identical vessel to this one is in the Corning Museum of Glass (64.1.17: Whitehouse 2001a, p. 223, no. 796).

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

von Saldern et al. 1974, p. 226, no. 663.

Wight 2011, pp. 96, 99, fig. 69.

Exhibitions

Molten Color: Glassmaking in Antiquity (Malibu, 2005–2006; 2007; 2009–2010)

Gläser der Antike: Sammlung Erwin Oppenländer (Hamburg and Cologne, 1974–1975)