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2008.18.2.15, Roman Aryballos

Catalogue Entry听
Photograph of a clear glass jar with a rounded body, two handles that connect the shoulders to the mouth, from the side against a neutral gray background.

From the Catalogue of听Ancient Glass in the University of Colorado Museum

Gift of H. Medill Sarkisian and Justine Sarkisian Rodriguez (1979)
(2008)
Height: 8.3听cm
Diameter (max.): 6.4听cm
Roman, 3rd to 4th century C.E.

Classification:听Isings Form 61;听Harden Fabric 4 or debased Fabric 3

Description: Thick rim folded out. Two trailed handles attached from either side of rim to shoulder. Short funnel neck. Body spherical, but somewhat flattened. Fluting on lower half of body. Relatively thick base concave with pontil mark.听Transparent with bluish-green tint. 听and dirt. Crack beneath one handle. Blown,听handles added separately.

Comment:听This design is in imitation of bronze and ceramic vessels that similarly held oil and perfumes. Examples come from all over the Roman Empire, but a disproportionately large number have been excavated north of the Black Sea. Other examples are Isings 1971, no. 42 (in Heerlen);听Hayes 1975, no. 119;听and Sorokina 1987,听fig. 1.1.

Discussion

Aryballoi听were small containers for oils and perfumes.

There is a small pontil mark on the base of this aryballos. A pontil was used during the final shaping of glass vessels. When a vase was being听blown, it was connected to a blowpipe at the mouth (top) of the vessel. When it came time to detach the vase from the blowpipe, a staff, or pontil, was heated and stuck onto the bottom of the vase. This allowed the glassworker to snap the blowpipe off of the top of the glass and keep听hold of the vessel from the bottom. Then the glass piece was held by the pontil while the mouth was reheated and smoothed. Pontil marks show up on many flasks听and were rarely erased after the glass cooled. Before the pontil was invented, glassworkers used clamps to hold the vessel by the neck when snapping it off the blowpipe (1).

Footnotes

  1. E. Marianne Stern, Roman Mold-Blown Glass (Toledo, Ohio: Toledo Museum of Art, 1995): 43-44.

References

  • Hayes, J. W.听Roman and Pre-Roman Glass in the Royal Ontario Museum.听罢辞谤辞苍迟辞:听1975.
  • Isings, C.听Roman Glass in Limburg.听Groningen: Wolters-Noordhoff Publishing, 1971.
  • Sorokina, N. P.听鈥淕lass Aryballoi (First-Third Centuries A.D.) from the Northern Black Sea Region,鈥澨Journal of Glass Studies听29 (1987): 40-46.