405. Flask

Condition

Small piece of rim missing. Small parts of the body covered with calcination and off-white weathering.

Description

Very thick, free-blown flask. Out-folded, flattened, horizontal rim; short, cylindrical neck, with a constriction at its base; ribbed, globular body, standing on a very small flat bottom.

Eight heavy ribs start under the neck and continue all the way to the center of the undersurface. Mild notches are noticeable in the places where the pucellas were pressed on the surface and started the pinching that resulted in the formation of the rib. Large chips of opaque white glass were irregularly dispersed throughout the vessel, from neck to undersurface.

Comments and Comparanda

This flask is quite unusual, and no proper parallels have been found. The great thickness of the vessel is quite uncommon among blown Roman glassware. Thinner, dark blue jars and flasks with white and yellow chips marvered on their surface are ascribed to the Egyptian region and dated in the sixth–eighth centuries (Carboni 2001, pp. 36–37, nos. 1.2a–d).

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. 256, no. 747.

Exhibitions

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