394. Flask

Condition

Intact; a small chip missing from the bottom. Heavy weathering, especially on the inside, and iridescence on the exterior.

Description

Fire-polished, rounded rim; conical neck, constricted at its base; pear-shaped body; slightly raised base-ring; flat bottom. Slightly lopsided neck. The body is covered with a mold-blown honeycomb pattern of six horizontal rows of hexagonal cells. Blown on a three-part mold with two vertical parts and one for the base, with a slightly raised circle at the periphery of the bottom rendering a base-ring.

Comments and Comparanda

Mold-blown and dip mold–blown glass vessels are present in various periods of Islamic glassware (Whitehouse 2001c, pp. 81–83). The honeycomb pattern appears in Islamic glassware on jugs, juglets, bowls, and jars in the tenth–eleventh centuries (e.g., Brosh 2003, pp. 356–357, nos. 479–482) and in the twelfth–thirteenth centuries (e.g., Whitehouse 2014, pp. 97–102, nos. 771–782). Some of them were probably made in Iran (von Saldern 1974, pp. 194, 197–199, 204, nos. 290–291, 293–294, 296, 306; Carboni and Whitehouse 2001, pp. 98–99, nos. 24–25).

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. 258, no. 755.

Exhibitions

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