65. Bowl with Fins

Condition

Intact; dark and calcinated crust on the interior and on the knobs on the exterior.

Description

Slightly flaring rim, cut off; deep body, cylindrical at the upper part, tapering toward a narrow, flat bottom. Eight tooled, slightly uneven square knobs around the circumference at mid-height. The knobs are not perfectly aligned, appearing at different heights with respect to the rim and the spaces between them. They were each pressed on all five sides to attain the square shape. The decoration was possibly applied as blobs of hot glass on the walls of the vessel while it was still on the blowpipe and further modeled with tooling to assume the square shape. Five wavy striations are visible along the area over and on the knobs. Two fine, horizontal incised grooves 0.9 and 1.0 cm below the rim.

Comments and Comparanda

This presumably free-blown vessel seems to be a descendant of the high-quality lobed or finned bowls that first appeared in the third century BCE and were evolving until the first century BCE (see cat. 64, wherein the discussion of this form).

No direct parallels have been located, but in rim shape and overall appearance the bowl looks close to finely ribbed bowls, that is, zarte Rippenschale (see comments on cat. 236, wherein the discussion of this form).

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. 102, no. 268; p. 101, plate no. 268.

Exhibitions

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

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