ROMAN GLASS BOTTLE WITH STRAP HANDLE

Bottle with Handle of Luduvic Deswelle Collection

Date: 3rd-5th Century Height: 23 cm Diameter: 12 cm

Description: Cylindrical bottle, light green color with golden iridescence.

Classification:  Isings form 126

Parallel: Glass in The Corning Museum of Glass Vol. I, David Whitehouse, 1997 number: 329

 

THE ROMAN GLASS GRAPE FLASK

Roman Grape Flasks

Grape Flasks are a type of Amphorisko used for liquids. They are decorated with a mold-blown cluster of grapes usually identical on both sides with a seam indicating where the two sides were joined. They were made in Syria, Italy and Gaul, in the first to third centuries. For this pictorial we are dividing grape flasks into three types: Realistic, Stylized and Flasks with Handles. The examples below are from private collections and museums.

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FLASKS WITH HANDLES

Yale Art Museum

St Germain, Archeological Museum

Metropolitan Museum of Art

Romisch-Germanisches Museum, Cologne

St Germain, Archeological Museum

Yale Art Museum

 

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REALISTIC FLASKS

New Orleans Art Museum

Nico F. Bijnsdorp

Toledo Art Museum

J. Paul Getty Museum

J. Paul Getty Museum

 

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STYLIZED FLASKS

Hamilton College

Joop van der Groen

The Windmill Collection of Roman Glass

Metropolitan Museum of Art

Toledo Art Museum

Metropolitan Museum of Art

Brooklyn Museum

Brooklyn Museum

 

 

ROMAN COLOR-BAND MOSAIC GLASS BOTTLES

COLOR-BAND MOSAIC GLASS BOTTLES

Roman cast and blown color-band mosaic bottles are a type of small to medium-sized containers designed to hold perfumes, scented oils, or other substances. All representatives of the class have polychrome bodies and were manufactures on a blow pipe using the inflation technology introduced in the Augustan and Julio-Claudian periods 44 BC-69 AD.

Remarks: This class of bottle is important because it combines free-blowing with preformed cast mosaic elements. It also documents the crucial transition from an industry predicated on monochrome and mosaic casting to one based almost exclusively of free and mold-blowing and marks the beginning of a new Roman industry. (Above taken from, Early Ancient Glass, David Grose, Toledo Museum, 1989)

J. Paul Getty Museum

Corning Museum of Glass

Corning Museum of Glass

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How a color-band glass bottle is made by William Gudenrath

 

 

ROMAN DOUBLE GLASS BALSAMARIUM

DOUBLE BALSAMARIUM of Hans van Rossum

Late 4th century – 5th century AD | Eastern Mediterranean, Syro-Palestinian area

                                Size↑10.6 cm | ø 3.5 cm (handles) | Weight 46 g

 

Technique: Free blown, thread and handles applied; tooled

Classification: Stern 2001: type I, Class C-2-a | Dussart 1998: BXIII.2212 no. 28

Condition: Intact, spectacular iridescence; excellent condition

Description: Transparent green glass. Rim folded inward. Almost oval formed body, apparently one tube but divided into two tubular compartments by pushing-in the glass from the top with a semicircular hand tool to form a diaphragm, tapering slightly toward the flattened, solid bottom-part with a height of about 2.5 centimeter. A thin thread spirally wound downward around the tubes clockwise in seventeen he way in which the Roman glass worker made this specific balsamarium seems to differ from the usual way he worked; this meant the two tubular compartments were created by pressing-in the glass bubble from one side and in a vertical direction. The thus obtained compartments are not only visible but also palpable. In this case however the glass worker not only pressed-in the glass bubble in a vertical direction to create two compartments but after that he must have reheated the glass tubes to get a completely smooth surface, on a way that the vertical line is no longer tangible because the glass looks and feels like it is one tube.

Provenance: Ex private collection Gershon Bineth, Jerusalem, acquired between 1962 – 1973

Published: Archaeological Center Tel Aviv, auction 50, 21 April 2011 lot 427

Reference: Romeins Glas, de collectie van Annelies Bos-Pette, H. van Rossum 2019 for a similar example in purple glass Bonhams London, auction 3 October 2000, lot 102 for an example in purple glass Le Verre en Jordanie et en Syrie du Sud, P. Dussart 1998 BXIII. 2212 pl. 57, 28

A SPECIAL TYPE OF STANGENGLAS WITH CLAWS AND ANIMAL HEADS

STANGENGLAS WITH CLAWS AND ANIMAL HEADS

Collection of Karl Amendt

A Stangenglas is a tall, narrow cylindrical drinking vessel, usually with a pedestal foot. This German word means “pole glass”.  Between the late 15^th and mid-16^th centuries, glassmakers in Germany produced large Stangenglases with elaborate applied decoration.  The glass is colorless or very pale green; the decoration is either the same color or a strongly contrasting color such as deep blue.  The ornament sometimes consists of low “trunks” or “claws” similar to the decoration found on late Roman and medieval beakers. (Information above was taken from a wonderful book Medieval Glass for Popes Princes and Peasants, The Corning Museum of Glass, David Whitehouse, 2010.)

 

Another type of Stangenglas (below) turned up in 15^th century, an octagonal one which slightly widens upwards and is supported on a folded foot.  These angular beakers were made until late in the 17^th century.  When rings of molten glass were laid on the beaker at regular distances the result was the so-called Passglas.  Some octagonal stangenglaser from the early part of the 16^th century were decorated with a complicated pattern of trailing with mould-blown trunks and heads of animals these elaborate adornments were no longer applied after 1550. ( Information above was taken from the book Glass Without Gloss, Utility glass from five Centuries excavated in the low countries 1300-1800. Harold E. Henkes, 1994)

 

Glasmuseum Hentrich, Museum Kunst Palast, Dusseldorf

 

Below are examples of these types of Stangenglases from different collections.

Collection of Karl Amendt

Museum Boymans-van Beuningen, Rotterdam

Collection of Karl Amendt

Collection of Karl Amendt

Collection of Karl Amendt

Collection of Karl Amendt

Collection of Karl Amendt

Landesmuseum Wurttemberh, Stuttgart

 

TWO VENETIAN WINE GLASSES AND A KANGXI WING VASE

representing “The Silk Road”

Henk-Martin Goldschmidt Collection

The handles of the vase seem to be inspired by Venetian wing glasses from the same time. The base of the wing is comparable to the blue wavy attachment of the left glass, up to the top curl, the “combs” on that of the right glass. In this case, the combs have a waffle pattern, but a relief of hatchings as painted on the Chinese vase also occurs. Museum Veste Coburg holds a rare glass vase of exactly the same shape as this Chinese one, including the undulating rim around the neck.

Description: Blue and white painted vase with wings, China Kangxi, last quarter of the 17^th century (h: 19,8 cm) positioned between two Venetian Winged glasses, second half of the 17th century or early 18th century (h: 17,5 cm and 13,0 cm respectively).

The Silk Road was a network of caravan as well as shipping routes through Central Asia, traded for many centuries between China and Eastern Asia on one side and the Middle East and Mediterranean on the other. For centuries, from classical antiquity to the late Middle Ages, the Silk Road was the good link between East and West. The first person to use the name Silk Road (Seidenstraße) was the German geographer and explorer Ferdinand von Richthofen in 1877.

The Silk Road trade played a significant role in the development of the civilizations of China, Korea, Japan, the Indian subcontinent, Iran, Europe, the Horn of Africa and Arabia, opening long-distance political and economic relations between the civilizations. Though silk was the major trade item exported from China, many other goods and ideas were exchanged, including religions (especially Buddhism), syncretic philosophies, sciences, and technologies like paper and gunpowder. So in addition to economic trade, the Silk Road was a route for cultural trade among the civilizations along its network. Diseases, most notably plague, also spread along the Silk Road.

It covered a period of 100 BC until the late mediaeval times, mid 15th century. So the depicted glasses here are after that period and the Chinese vase is most probably transported through VOC ships from China towards Europe. The Silk Road was a network of trade routes that connected the East and West, and was central to the economic, cultural, political, and religious interactions between these regions from the 2nd century BCE to the collapse in the18^th century. The silk trade continued to flourish until it was disrupted by the collapse of the Safavid Empire in the 1720s.

One of the silk roads reached from Konstantinopal to Peking, so porcelain from Jingdezhen could be following this road although by ship was also possible during the last quarter of the 17^th century.

Along the Silk Road, over the centuries, many things were transported and spread including silk, diseases, cultural habits, religions but also glass. However glass mainly was transported from west to east, as can be seen trough archeological findings. The transport of ceramics was in the opposite direction. In that picture the three items shown fit.

From left to right:

(I)        Wine glass with wings with aquamarine colored glass

Description

Glass has a trumpet-shaped goblet and a cigar-shaped stem (verre a jambe). On either side a wing built from a base of aquamarine-colored glass, which is made up from bottom to top of two triangles with a half heart ending in a curl above.

On this a colorless pinched glass thread, with a decoration of nine pinches on one side and eight pinches on the other side, which then goes down at a sharp angle with a pinch in the tip to the tip of the upper blue triangle where after an extra pinch again at a sharp angle with a pinched tip to the next blue triangle, where after six pinches the thread ends in a long stretched curl. Goblet and stem are connected by a disc (a merese). A disc also connects foot and stem.

Material:        Cristallo and aquamarine-colored glass

Date:               Seventeenth century

Origin:           Italy, Venice

Dimensions:   Height 17,5 cm, diameter cup 12,5 cm and diameter foot 8,5 cm

Condition:      Small crack in the merese. Slight chalk build-up in the goblet.

Provenance

From Belgian collection bought by Laméris, Amsterdam at the Tefaf, in the Nineties, following an advertisement in Collect and a visit to the museum in Toledo, this ensemble purchased from Laméris March 2020.

 

(II)                   Blue and white painted vase with wings on both sides

Description

Shape: A vase consisting of a flattened sphere, a tapered neck and a flared mouth opening. Neck and mouth opening are separated by a wavy imposed cord. On both sides we see two handles, the ‘wings’. The entire vase is a copy of a (now very rare) 17th century wing vase that, like wing glasses, made of glass or wood, were sent to China by the Dutch as an example to be copied in porcelain. (The question was to recreate the shapes exactly, but to make the decoration as ‘exotic’ as possible. The send back question was if one could not send such complicated shapes!).

Decoration: The decoration is in underglaze blue. All three parts have a floral decoration, in addition, a single bird can be seen on the wide flared mouth opening. The ‘wings’ are shaded and dotted in blue, the top of the mouth opening and the sphere and the bottom of the neck have a decorative band decoration, on the bottom are two concentric circles.

 

Parallels:        This type of vase is offered regularly at various auction houses (e.g. Christie’s, febr 2012, lot 603, Rob Michiel, okt 2015, lot 275, Bonhams, sep 2018, lot 179) and dealers (e.g. van Leeuwen, The Hague, Catherine Hunt, Cheltenham, Gibson, London, Guest and Gray, London).

 

Material:        porcelain

Date:               Kangxi, (1662-1722), last quarter of the 17^th century

Origin:           China, Jing de zhen kilns

Dimensions:   Height 19,8 cm, diameter opening 6,8 cm, diameter base 6,6 cm

Provenance:   Laméris, Amsterdam acquired March 2020

Condition:     intact, no restorations

 

(III)     Wine glass with diamond line engraving of flower branches.

Glass: 

Cup-shaped chalice. Hollow stem with a square knot above an inverted baluster. On either side a wing constructed from an ear-shaped base of aquamarine-colored glass, with five round combs with a waffle pattern and an elongated ornament on the bottom. Slightly conical base. A disc connects cup and stem. A disc also connects foot and stem.

The model of this stem with the wide blown hollow stem in the form of an inverted baluster under two discs, is typical for around 1700. The glasses are engraved (Theuerkauff-Liederwald 1994, cat.no. 299), but also with typical decorations of this time: with a cup in the a penne technique (a funnel-shaped example: Theuerkauff-Liederwald 1994, cat.no. 303). ), ribs (Theuerkauff-Liederwald 1994, cat.no. 300) and diamond line engraving like this one. In Veste Coburg there is a glass with an identical shape with a decoration of flowers in a diamond line engraving (Theuerkauff-Liederwald 1994, cat.no. 298).

Line engraving:

The chalice is engraved on two sides with three branches, one with a large flower in the middle, the other with a bird. The branches consist of, sometimes wavy, lines, the leaves and buds of the side branches are outlined with shaded scratches in them. The flower has a round heart with open scratches in two directions that mingle. The six petals have a recessed circle at the base with dense scratches around it. The bird has feathers and a tail. Leaves and buttons on the foot.

Material:        Cristallo and aquamarine colored glass

Date:               Second half 17^th, early 18^th century

Origin:           Venice

Height:           13,0 cm,  diameter cup 10,2 cm and diameter foot 8,8 cm

Provenance:   Laméris, Amsterdam acquired March 2020

Condition:     intact, no restorations

 

Parallels

The Museum Veste Coburg Museum contains a rare glass example of the vase that must have been made after this porcelain vase or, perhaps more logically, the other way around. Even the pinched ribs on the combs are imitated in blue lines, just like the wavy edge around the neck (Theuerkauff Liederwald 1994, cat. No. 644).

 

Visit Toledo Museum of Art Glass Pavilion, Toledo, Ohio, July 2018. Explanation on museum signs: Southern Netherlandish “Serpent” wine glass, Glass, blown, rooled, about 1650 – 1700, Purchased with funds from the Libby Endowment, Gift of Edward Drummond Libbey, 1953. Number 110b, left and number 90 to the right. Chinese Kangxi Period, 1662-1722,Vase Imitating Venetian “Serpent” Goblet, Porcelain, applied handles, with painted decoration, late 17^th century, Puchased with funds from the Libbey Endowment, Gift of Edward Drummond Libbey, 2004. A hybrid type combining Chinese and European features, the body of this porcelain vase has a gourd shape common in Chinese blue and white porcelain, whereas the applied handles imitate decorations on Venetian and façon de Venise glasses made in The Netherlands and Germany in the second half of the 17th century. Chinese potters may have used a printed image, but more likely copied this feature from an actual glass (or a wooden form). Serpent-stem glasses were certainly among the Dutch luxury goods traded widely, and it is possible that such vessels were made available to Chinese potters to copy.

 

More examples or known of various forms of (façon de) Venise glass and a counterpart in Chinese porcelain such as a goblet or a stem cup, however the wing glass and wing vase are the most expressive in form. These were also on display Toledo Museum of Art.

 

References

– Collect journal, March 2020,  24th edition, Snoeck publisher, page 7, advertisement Laméris, Amsterdam

– Description objects by Kitty Laméris, Amsterdam March 10^th 2020

– Anna-Elisabeth Theuerkauff-Liederwald, Venezianisches Glas der Veste Coburg, Die Sammlung Herzog Alfreds von Sachsen-Coburg und Gotha (1844-1900), Kunstsammlungen der Veste Coburg Luca Verlag Lingen 1994, cat.nr. 644 a.o.

– Vanderven Oriental Art – Kangxi porcelain & Coromandel lacquer, published on Apr 12, 2013 on ISSUU, number 3 Wing Vases, page 20 – 21, Den Bosch, The Netherlands

– Chinese blue and white stem cup, Kangxi (1662-1722) decorated with phoenix amongst scrolling clouds, the foot with Daoist emblems, sold by Guest and Grey, London

– For an illustrated example of this vase see William R. Sargent, Treasures of Chinese Export from the Peabody Essex Museum, p. 123, pl. 35

 

 

Gallo-Roman Glass Hofheim Cup

29R Hofheim Cup in the Allaire Glass Collection

29R Hofheim Roman Glass Cup  Date: Mid First Century  Height: 5cm Weight: 78g

 

Description: This is a blown bulbous Roman glass cup with horizontal wheel-cut lines and a polished cracked-off rim.

Provenance: Woodhouse Collection 1907

Remarks: Cups like this are called Hofheim cups after a Rhineland military site where over thirty examples were found.  They are common in in Italy and the western provinces of the Roman empire, including Britain. Most Hofheim cups are made of relatively thick transparent to translucent monochrome glass. Polychrome cups  were also made and some with decoration.  Contemporary wall paintings show these cups used as tableware. In a still life painting from Herculaneum executed between 60 and 70 CF, a glass cup with wheel-cut lines is placed over the mouth of a pottery jug (lagoena) used for water or wine. Suggesting that the vessel was used for drinking or as a finger bowls for washing one’s hands. There is no evidence that the cups were used for containers for cosmetics.  The Hofheim made its first appearance in Augustan times before the year 14, but more common between 14-54. Early cups have relatively straight walls; later cups are more bulbous with the walls curving inward at the rim. Cups with a kicked bottom became common in the Flavian period (69-96). Based on the development of the shape of 29R, a mid first century date is suggested.

Below are additional example of the Hofheim cups from various collections.

Charles Ede Ltd #10 in sale catalog 2006

Trasparenze Imperiali Vetri eomani dalla Croazia, Ed. Roberta Pellati 1998

#16 the Wolf Collection Roman, Byzantine, Early Medieval Glass by E. Marianne Stern

Still life painting from Herculaneum executed between 60 and 70 CF

 

TWO POCKET TUMBLERS

Two pocket tumblers in the Allaire Glass Collection

21E Pocket Tumbler 17-18th C

30E Small Glass Pocket Tumbler with White Trailing 17-18th Century

 

tops

bottoms

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Remarks: A pocket tumbler is a glass vessel which was carried by a traveler in a pouch or pocket.  Tumblers were blown and flattened to an oval shape then decorated sometimes with trailing of contrasting color to the body of the vessel. A large number of pocket tumblers were made in Spain from the early-17^th though the late-18^th century.

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21E: Pocket tumbler(pictured above) is 10 cm high and weighs 234g. We believe it was made in Spain in the early 17th to the late 18th century. It has a distinct decorative chain or spectacle pattern of blue green trailing.

30E: This pocket tumbler(pictured above) is a golden honey color with thin white trailing. This vessel is unusual because of its color, type of trailing and its small size.  Height 7.3 cm and wight 102g. We also believe it was made in Spain, or Germany in the early 17th to the late 18th century.

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Both have one thing in common the origin and date of these glasses are unknown because no parallels could be found for them. If any one knows of parallels or something about these beautiful and interesting vessels please leave a comment below.  Thanks for your help.

SPANISH GLASS CANTIR with CORDED WHITE CANES

44E Spanish Cantir with Corded White Canes from Catalonia

of the Allaire glass collection

44E Spanish Cantir

Description: Cantir of yellowish glass decorated with opaque white cord trails called canna a fili. Glassmakers in Catalonia, Spain were producing decoration of this type in the middle of the 16^th into the 17^th century

Date: Second half of 16^th through 17^th century. . Size: Height: 19.5 cm Weight: 139 g

Remarks: The trails used for this type of decoration are called corded white canes which is a single opaque white thread of glass surrounded by clear colorless glass. During this period of glass making the canes were either marvered flush with the body or left in relief called cords.

Below are other examples of the corded canes decoration on Spanish glass from the book, Fragil Transparencia Vidrios espanoles de los siglos XVI a XVIII, by Jean-Paul Philippart 2011. Click on the pictures to enlarge them and the X in the right hand corner to come back to this page.

 

Sanctuary Lamp 16th century

The corded canes and prunt on this sanctuary lamp

A footed bowl with handles.

A bucket bowl with handle.

Pitcher

Almorratxa, vessel for sprinkling rose-water,late16th C.

 

ROMAN GLASS FOOTED BEAKERS WITH PINCHED TRAILS

This post is a pictorial essay of a particularly beautiful selection of glass beakers having deep pinched decoration. This design style seems to have been manufacture in Italy beginning in the 1st century and continued for the next couple of centuries. With some variation in styling, the vertical panel design appears to be most common as was the use of colorless glass, for these beakers.

Corning Museum of Glass

The Rijksmuseum van Oudheden in Leiden

The Getty Roman Villa in Malibu is part of The J. Paul Getty Museum

Corning Museum of Glass

The Musee d Archeologie Nationale located in the Chateau de Saint-Germain-en-Laye

Museum of Antiquities, in Rouen

The Musee d Archeologie Nationale located in the Chateau de Saint-Germain-en-Laye