52. Oinochoe

Condition

Parts of the rim, neck, handle, and the decorative band on the neck are restored. In the interior, which is rough, off-white remains of the core are visible. There are small cracks all over the body, probably indicating that it was made by marvering crushed glass.

Description

Core-formed, translucent dark blue miniature oinochoe. Applied trefoil rim-disk; long cylindrical neck; sloping shoulder; ovoid body; convex bottom; discoid base with a tall stem. An almost vertical, mildly convex strap handle is attached on the shoulder (distorting the decorative protrusions in that area), stretched upward, and bent to the underside of the rim-disk.

Three rows of pinched, projecting knobs decorate the vessel from shoulder to mid-body height. A small, amorphous hole is visible on the lower part of the bottom, adjacent to the spot where the coil that forms the base is applied. On the convex bottom is a thick coil of glass, wound four times, forming the stem and the base, which is flattened to a discoid shape. A finer thread is spirally wound five times over the lower part of the body and the stem, beginning on the lower body. A thick coil is wound one and a half times around the mid-neck height and flattened to form a decorative discoid band.

One of the glass knobs on the body is further stretched and bent on the shoulder, covering—only partly—a hole on the body wall. On the lower part of the body a small cavity is visible, and another minute one between two knobs of the lowest row.

Both ends of the handle have rounded edges, indicating that the handle was made of a lump of glass that was first stretched and tooled to the desired size on a flat surface, and then applied on the vessel.

Comments and Comparanda

The projecting knobs that cover the surface of the body, which give it a spiky appearance, gave to the vessels of this type the nickname “hedgehog” or “hirsute” (irsuti in Italian) vessels (including oil flasks in the shape of small oinochoae like this vessel, small bowls, alabastra, and rarely lenticular pyxides). They were made in Etruscan workshops, originally in Caere and later in Orvieto, using the core-forming technique and were made, almost exclusively, of blue glass in different shades imported from the Near East. In addition to the vessels, beads and jewelry inlays were produced in these workshops. They appear in the middle of the seventh century BCE, and their production was at its peak during the late seventh and the first decades of the sixth century BCE. They were probably made to hold perfume in the form of scented oil, which was a specialty of the region (especially around Vetulonia), and they are found in elite burials at the sites of Cerveteri, Orvieto, Chiusi, and other early Etruscan sites (Caputo 1963, pp. 13–17; Bizzari 1965, pp. 57–61; Martelli 1994, pp. 75–98; Giuntoli 1996, pp. 13–16; Cappucini 2017, pp. 44–46).

Provenance

By 1972, Gawain McKinley Ltd.; by 1973–1988, 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

McKinley 1972, p. 2, upper left ill.

JGS 1973, p. 187, no. 2, ill.

von Saldern et al. 1974, p. 54, no. 115; p. 52, plate no. 115.

Harden 1981, p. 170, no. 113e.

Carandini 1985, p. 188, fig. 227.

Martelli 1994, p. 97, nos. 44–45.

von Saldern 2004, p. 88, no. 3.

Wight 2011, pp. 34, 36, fig. 19.

Exhibitions

Molten Color: Glassmaking in Antiquity (Malibu, 2005–2006; 2007; 2009–2010)

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