Roman, Imperial Period, ca. 1st to 3rd century CE. An impressive hand-blown glass vessel, the body of a rounded cylindrical form rising to a tubular neck and a dramatically flared mouth with a substantive trailed handle joining rim to shoulder and a decorative trail wrapped around the circumference just below the rim - all upon a concave base. The glass itself is translucent with generous areas of rainbow (purple, aqua, blue, green, and pink) as well as silvery and golden iridescence. Size: 3" in diameter x 6" H (7.6 cm x 15.2 cm)

The following quote waxes poetic about the process of free-blown glass in ancient Rome, "First he heated the very point of the iron, then snatched from nearby a lump of bright glass and placed it skillfully within the hollow furnace. And the crystal as it tasted the heat of the fire was softened by the strokes of Hephaestus like . . .he blue in from his mouth a quick breath . . . .like a man essaying the most delightful art of the flute. The glass received the force of his breath and became swollen out around itself like a sphere before it. It would receive another onslaught of the divine breath, for often swinging it like an ox-herd his crook he would breath into . . ." ( P. Oxy. 50.3536, a third century poem on glass blowing - R.A. Coles, Oxyrhynchus Papyri 50 (1983), p. 58 from "Solid Liquid" catalogue, Fortuna Fine Arts, New York, 1999, p. 56)

Provenance: private East Coast, USA collection

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#131391

Areas of earthen encrustation and wonderful rainbow and silvery iridescence.