Condition
Fully preserved.
Description
Irregular, partly pressed, globular light blue body with three eyes around it. One eye is made of a dark blue central rod surrounded by a wide white, a thin blue, and another wide white layer. The second and third consist of a dark blue center surrounded by a wide white layer.
Comments and Comparanda
Glass eye beads were used from the eighth century BCE, and widely during the sixth and fifth centuries BCE: Ignatiadou, Despoina, and Kaliopi Chatzinikolaou. 2002. “Γυάλινες χάντρες από το αρχαίο νεκροταφείο της Θέρμης (Σέδες) Θεσσαλονίκης.” In Το γυαλί από την Αρχαιότητα έως Σήμερα, ed. Πέτρος Θέμελης, Β’ Συνέδριο Μαργαριτών Μυλοποτάμου Κρήτης 1997, 57–72. Athens: Εταιρεία Μεσσηνιακών Σπουδών., pp. 65–69, wherein further bibliography; Adam-Veleni, Polyxeni, and Despoina Ignatiadou, eds. 2010. Gyalinos kosmos / Glass Cosmos. Thessaloniki: Archaeological Museum of Thessaloniki., pp. 189, 190, 191, 197–198, 208–209, 238–239, 318–320, 323–325, nos. 29, 31–31, 33, 45, 61–63, 118–119, 310–317, 319–320, 322, all dated by their archaeological contexts to the sixth and fifth centuries BCE. For small-size examples, see in particular pp. 189, 320, 323, nos. 29 and 317, 320, dated to the fifth century BCE; finds from Olynthos at pp. 371–373, nos. 422–429, are dated in the fourth century by the destruction of the city, yet they may well be of the fifth century BCE as well.
Provenance
1980, David Swingler, American, born 1948, donated to the J. Paul Getty Museum, 1980
Bibliography
Unpublished
Exhibitions
None