Condition
Mended. Part of the rim and several parts of the body and the bottom are fills. Some cracks visible; surface pitted and in areas discolored. Probably missing handles and base pad. There is a visible scar where the lower part of a now-missing handle once attached. The corresponding handle attachment spot of the rim is missing. Spots on the shoulder and rim where the other handle, now missing, would have been attached are filled with a colored resin.
Description
Translucent dark blue ground; opaque white and yellow decoration. Broad, horizontal rim-disk; long cylindrical neck gradually widening toward the body; obtuse-angled shoulder; long convex lower part of the body. It is highly likely that it had two long S-shaped handles and a pad base, but because critical parts of the rim, shoulder, and bottom areas are missing, it is not possible to determine the exact shape of the vessel.
A yellow and a white thread—both marvered—are spirally wound around the vessel from the rim to the center of the bottom. The thread was tooled three times downward and three times upward to form very wide feather patterns on the neck and the upper body, and five times downward and five times upward on the lower body.
Comments and Comparanda
On the origins of core-formed amphoriskoi, see cat. 34. This object belongs to the third group of core-formed vessels, which appears between the second century BCE and the early first century CE; the centers of production seem to have been in Cyprus and on the Phoenician coast. The group includes different shapes of alabastra and amphoriskoi, which are similar to those of ceramic vessels manufactured at the same time (Harden, Donald B. 1981. Catalogue of Greek and Roman Glass in the British Museum, vol. 1: Core- and Rod-Formed Vessels and Pendants and Mycenean Cast Objects. London: British Museum., pp. 123–141; Grose, David Frederick. 1989. Early Ancient Glass: Core-Formed, Rod-Formed, and Cast Vessels and Objects from the Late Bronze Age to the Early Roman Empire, 1600 B.C. to A.D. 50. New York: Hudson Hills Press., pp. 122–125). For the classification of this particular amphoriskos, see Grose, David Frederick. 1989. Early Ancient Glass: Core-Formed, Rod-Formed, and Cast Vessels and Objects from the Late Bronze Age to the Early Roman Empire, 1600 B.C. to A.D. 50. New York: Hudson Hills Press., p. 123, class III:E, amphoriskos form III:3. A few unprovenanced examples include Grose, David Frederick. 1989. Early Ancient Glass: Core-Formed, Rod-Formed, and Cast Vessels and Objects from the Late Bronze Age to the Early Roman Empire, 1600 B.C. to A.D. 50. New York: Hudson Hills Press., pp. 172–173, nos. 177–179; Corning Museum of Glass, 2022.1.26 (previously Brooklyn Museum, 12.34): vessel’s form and displaced feather pattern are the same, and it preserves the strongly curved handles stretching from the rim to the shoulder, typical for the form. That vessel was reassembled with the addition of what seems to be a freeblown base of a stemmed beaker: https://glasscollection.cmog.org/objects/47925/alabastron; Musée du Verre, Grand Curtius, Liège, B 1463; Royal Ontario Museum, 950.157.21: the same vessel without handle and with a flat foot noted in von Saldern, Axel. 1974. Glassammlung Hentrich. Antike und Islam. Düsseldorf: Kunstmuseum., no. 206; Hayes, John W. 1975. Roman and Pre-Roman Glass in the Royal Ontario Museum. Toronto: Royal Ontario Museum., p. 15, no. 38, plate 3: https://collections.rom.on.ca/objects/405071/.
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
Saldern von, Axel, Birgit Nolte, Peter La Baume, and Thea Elisabeth Haevernick. 1974. Gläser der Antike. Sammlung Erwin Oppenländer. Mainz: von Zabern., p. 76, no. 206; p. 78, plate no. 206.
Exhibitions
Molten Color: Glassmaking in Antiquity (Malibu, 2005–2006; 2007; 2009–2010)
Gläser der Antike: Sammlung Erwin Oppenländer (Hamburg and Cologne, 1974–1975)