434. Jar with Bronze Handle

Condition

Fully preserved. Weathering has caused iridescence on the inside and around the mouth. The bronze wire is weathered, appearing greenish, and the hoop around the neck is broken.

Description

Flaring, fire-polished, rounded rim; short, funnel mouth; wide, convex shoulder, ending in a horizontal bulge, below which the body gradually tapers toward the flat, slightly concave bottom. A solid relief pontil scar (W. 1 cm) is visible at the center of the bottom.

A twisted bronze wire, wound around the neck, forms a hoop—now an open ring—from which two figure-eight-shaped loops are suspended; the bent ends of the long, horseshoe-shaped handle pass through these two loops. Each loop is made of a ring, pushed in to form two oval eyelets and then folded again, bringing the eyelets next to each other and thus forming a loop.

Comments and Comparanda

Small-sized jars of similar shape and quality are known from excavations at Fustat, the center of medieval Cairo in Egypt (Scanlon and Pinder-Wilson 2001, pp. 50–51, type 22b), dated in the ninth–eleventh centuries; see also a jar at the Corning Museum of Glass (Whitehouse 2014, pp. 42–43, nos. 656–658), dated between the ninth and eleventh centuries CE, and another at the Newark Museum (Auth 1976, p. 229, no. 518). For a similar miniature, but more open, vessel form from Sabra al-Mansuriyya, Tunisia, see Foy 2020, form Sb16. For the general form, see Lamm 1930, plate 3:24.

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. 206, no. 579.

Exhibitions

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