Condition
Mended with a small filling. There is some weathering on the surface.
Description
The dish has a flared, horizontal rim; conical, carinated body; flat bottom. It stands on a circular base-ring formed by an applied grayish green coil of glass.
The vessel is made of discoid mosaic tesserae of two types:
The first is roughly hexagonal: around a hexagonal central rod, 18 trapezoidal canes coil, forming a spiral with one and a half revolutions. Each is made of a translucent bluish core surrounded by a very fine yellow layer. The cane is surrounded by a thick purple and a fine white layer.
The second floret consists of six round concentric rods, in turn white, purple, yellow, purple, white, and purple. The white and yellow layers are considerably thinner than the purple ones. A few of these florets were probably accidentally placed on their side, appearing at a first glance purple with white striations.
Comments and Comparanda
Mosaic vessels, although known from the Hellenistic era (fourth–first centuries BCE), become more numerous in the Early Roman period. The technique of mosaic glass provided the opportunity to create multiples of a figural or design composition by bundling and pressing colored glass canes while hot and malleable, forming the desired motif. They are made through a complex technique in which, first, rods of colored glass were tooled and fused together so that the cross section of the new composite rod would provide the desired colorful design, often a floral motif or a spiral. Next, the preformed, composite rods, called canes, were cut into disks or slices, called florets. In order to form a vessel with this motif on it, the glassmaker then arranged the florets in a desired pattern in the bottom of a two-part mold or on a flat surface that was later slumped on a convex former mold. When heated, the florets fused together to form the vessel. Finally, the rough vessel was released from the mold and the surface was ground to a considerable depth in order to make it smooth and even. The making of a mosaic glass vessel could take a great amount of time, involving great expertise and labor as well as large quantities of fuel and raw materials (for the production technique, see Stern, Eva Marianne, and Birgit Schlick–Nolte. 1994. Early Glass of the Ancient World, 1600 B.C.–A.D. 50: Ernesto Wolf Collection. Ostfildern: Gerd Hatje., pp. 65–66, 68–71; Dawes, Susan. 2002. “Hellenistic and Roman Mosaic Glass: A New Theory of Production.” Annual of the British School at Athens 97: 413–428.).
Shallow, carinated dishes—a well-known form among this group of exquisite vessels—constitute, with carinated bowls (see comments on cat. 89), one of the most numerous groups of Composite Mosaic Vessels (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. 257–258). This form of dish appears also among contemporaneous luxurious, monochrome glass products (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., pp. 254–256, figs. 136, 142; Goldstein, Sidney M. 1979. Pre-Roman and Early Roman Glass in the Corning Museum of Glass. Corning, NY: Corning Museum of Glas., p. 149, no. 315). Mosaic dishes of this shape are in the collections of a number of museums, including the Toledo Museum of Art (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., no. 442); the Walters Art Gallery in Baltimore (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., fig. 145, 47.75; https://art.thewalters.org/detail/13501/mosaic-plate/); Yale University Art Gallery (Matheson, Susan B. 1980. Ancient Glass in the Yale University Art Gallery. New Haven, CT: Yale University Art Gallery., p. 20, no. 54); The Metropolitan Museum of Art (Glass from the Ancient World: The Ray Winfield Smith Collection. 1957. Corning, NY: Corning Museum of Glass in the Corning Glass Center., p. 82, no. 134, fig. 134; Milleker, Elizabeth J. 2000. The Year One: Art of the Ancient World East and West. New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art., pp. 64, 206–7, no. 51); the Corning Museum of Glass (Goldstein, Sidney M. 1979. Pre-Roman and Early Roman Glass in the Corning Museum of Glass. Corning, NY: Corning Museum of Glas., pp. 180–181, no. 468, plate 25); the Louvre (Arveiller-Dulong, Véronique, and Marie-Dominique Nenna. 2000. Les verres antiques du Musée du Louvre 1: Contenants à parfums en verre moulé sur noyau et vaisselle moulée: VIIe siècle avant J.-C.–Ier siècle après J.-C. Paris: Somogy., p. 148, no. 185); and Landesmuseum Württemberg Stuttgart (Stern, Eva Marianne, and Birgit Schlick–Nolte. 1994. Early Glass of the Ancient World, 1600 B.C.–A.D. 50: Ernesto Wolf Collection. Ostfildern: Gerd Hatje., p. 332, no. 102).
Provenance
By 1964–1985, Ernst Kofler, 1899–1989, and Marthe Truniger, 1918–1999 (Lucerne, Switzerland); 1985, Private Collection [sold, Ancient Glass: Formerly the Kofler-Truniger Collection, Christie’s, London, March 5–6, 1985, lot 183, to the J. Paul Getty Museum through Robin Symes, Limited]
Bibliography
Sammlung E. und M. Kofler-Truniger, Luzern: [Ausstellung] Kunsthaus Zürich, 7. Juni bis 2. August, 1964, exh. cat. Basel: Kunsthaus Zurich., p. 47, no. 459; plate 36.
Kunz, Martin, ed. 1981. 3000 Jahre Glaskunst: Von der Antike bis zum Jugendstil, exh. cat. Lucerne: Kunstmuseum., p. 15, color plate (center); p. 63, no. 160 (not ill.).
Ancient Glass. Formerly the Kofler-Truniger Collection, March 5–6, 1985, sale cat. London: Christie’s., lot 183.
“Acquisitions/1985.” J. Paul Getty Museum Journal 14 (1986): 175–286., p. 195, no. 66.
No author. 1986. “Recent Important Acquisitions Made by Public and Private Collections in the United States and Abroad.” Journal of Glass Studies 28: 98–115., p. 98, no. 1.
Exhibitions
Pompeii and the Roman Villa: Art and Culture around the Bay of Naples (Los Angeles, 2009)
Reflecting Antiquity: Modern Glass Inspired by Ancient Rome (Malibu, 2007–2008; Corning, 2008)
Sammlung E. und M. Kofler-Truniger, Luzern (Zurich, 1964)