Condition
Mended with a concealed join at the transition from the neck to the body. Iridescence and pitting on the exterior, whitish incrustation on the interior.
Description
Fire-polished rim, bent slightly inward; conical neck with five horizontal constrictions; sloping shoulder; everted conical body; slightly concave bottom. Circular mark of a solid pontil (W. 0.6 cm) at the center of the bottom.
On the body, incised decoration: On the rounded shoulder on the uppermost part of the body there is a frieze of ovals. Below this frieze is a horizontal groove, and another one near the bottom. Between these two grooves, six truncated triangles are arranged all around the body, each one inscribing a dash at the upper part and a semicircular groove at the bottom. Between the triangles there is a semicircular groove hanging from the upper horizontal groove.
Comments and Comparanda
Small flasks with globular or squat, cylindrical body and neck with consequent constrictions are quite well-known, dated between the late eighth and the eleventh centuries. See comments on cat. 427.
Wheel-cutting and wheel-engraving were popular decorative techniques between the ninth and eleventh centuries in Islamic glassware, as numerous finds from various sites in Syria, Palestine, Iraq, Iran, Egypt, and Tunisia attest. Six categories of cut and engraved objects are defined on the basis of the decoration, which can be: scratch-engraved, faceted, with disks and related motifs, with raised outlines, slant-cut, and linear. In the twelfth century, cutting gradually went out of fashion, being replaced by enameling, which was the technique that prevailed during the next two centuries in Islamic glassware.
Cutting was employed mostly for the embellishment of colorless vessels of various forms, such as bowls, bottles, goblets, and flasks, although colorful and even cameo vessels occur too. There are indications that quite similar products were made in Iran, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Israel, and Egypt (Kröger, Jens. 1995. Nishapur: Glass of the Early Islamic Period. New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art., pp. 116–175; Kröger, Jens. 1999. “Fustat and Nishapur: Questions about Fatimid Cut Glass.” In L’Égypte fatimide: Son art et son histoire, ed. Marianne Barrucand, 219–232. Paris: Presses de l’université Paris-Sorbonne., pp. 219–232; Carboni, Stefano. 2001. Glass from Islamic Lands: The Al-Sabah Collection. London: Thames & Hudson., pp. 71–136; Whitehouse, David B. 2001. “Cut and Engraved Glass.” In Glass of the Sultans, exh. cat., ed. Stefano Carboni and David Whitehouse, 155–198. New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art., pp. 155–161; Foy, Danièle. 2020. Le verre de Sabra al-Mansuriya (Kairouan, Tunisie), milieu Xe–milieu XIe siècle. Production et consommation: Vaisselle–contenants–vitrages. Archaeology of the Maghreb 1. Oxford: Archaeopress., pp. 85–98). For miniature flasks with cut decoration, see cat. 383, with several parallels from various sites.
Provenance
1979, Edwin A. Lipps, 1922–1988 (Pacific Palisades, California), donated to the J. Paul Getty Museum, 1979
Bibliography
Unpublished
Exhibitions
None