- Museum number
- 1876,1114.4
- Description
-
Green mould-blown glass cup with a cut and ground rim, two loop handles on one side, and a concave base decorated with four concentric circles and a central dot. The sides are decorated with two friezes of circles and stars, and two panels of Greek alphabetic characters: "Ennion made (me)" and "let the buyer be remembered.
- Production date
-
25-50
-
30-70 (Lightfoot 2014)
- Dimensions
-
Diameter: 6.86 centimetres (base)
-
Diameter: 13.58 centimetres (rim)
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Height: 9.75 centimetres
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Weight: 248 grammes
- $Inscriptions
-
- Curator's comments
- The findspot given here is mentioned in the glass register, but not in Cesnola's 1877 account where no provenance is provided. Given that he was not averse to providing vague or false provenances, this omission is intriguing. Colonna- Ceccaldi (1882, 208) however gives Kythrea with no further information or reason for the attribution (though he was closely acquainted with Cesnola and his collection). For an overview of the area around Tremithusa, much explored in the 19th century and possibly part of the territory of Golgoi, in Hellenistic and Roman times, see Masson 1995 and Hermary 2004, 50-51.
Ennion is one of four named makers of mould-blown glass from this period, and may have been the first, as examples of his work have been found in locations to the west of Sidon dating from the late AD 30s and 40s. His work includes a number of other drinking cups, as well as jugs and flasks with six sides. It has been suggested that Ennion's home was in Sidon, as two of his signed pieces come from there, though more have been found in Jerusalem. Nonetheless, Ennion's name seems to be a Greek version of a Semitic name, since it is not common in Greek, and 'let the buyer be remembered' was also a traditional Semitic greeting.
See Tatton-Brown 2001, 70-2 and fig. 90. For parallels, see Whitehouse 2001, no. 482, pp. 18-19 (two-handled cup) and Stern 1995, 72-3, 100-2 (cat. no. 5), both with further refs. Harden 1935 and 1946 provide earlier surveys of vessels with mould-blown inscriptions, with more recent studies of mould-blown glass in Fontaine-Hodiamont 2010.
Bibliography:
Colonna-Ceccaldi G. 1882, Monuments antiques de Chypre, de Syrie et d'Égypte (Paris: Didier).
Fontaine-Hodiamon, C.C et al. (eds) 2010, D'Ennion au Val Saint-Lambert. Le verre soufflé-moulé (Brussels).
Harden D. 1935, 'Romano-Syrian glasses with mould-blown inscriptions', Journal of Roman Studies 25, 165.
Harden D. 1946, 'Two tomb-groups of the first century A.D. from Yahmour, Syria, and a supplement to the list of Romano- Syria glasses with mould- blown inscriptions', Syria 24 (1944-45), 81-96, 291-2.
Hermary, A. 2004, 'Autour de Golgoi : les cités de la Mesaoria aux époques hellénistique et romaine'. CCEC 34, 47-68.
Masson, O (1995), ‘Appendice: antiquités de Trémithous (Tremetousha)’, BCH 119, 410-413.
Stern E. M. 1995, The Toledo Museum of Art. Roman mold-blown glass. The first through sixth centuries (Rome: Bretschneider).
Tatton-Brown V. 2001, 'The Roman Empire' in H. Tait (ed.), Five thouand years of glass (London: British Museum Press), 62-97.
Whitehouse D. 2001, Roman glass in the Corning Museum of Glass. Volume 2, New York, no. 482 p. 18-19 (two-handled cup).
- Location
- Not on display
- Exhibition history
-
Exhibited:
2014-2015, 8 Dec-13 April, New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Ennion: Master of Roman Glass
2015, 15 May - 19 Oct, Corning Museum of Glass, Ennion: Master of Roman Glass
- Acquisition date
- 1876
- Department
- Greek and Roman
- Registration number
- 1876,1114.4
- Additional IDs
-
Miscellaneous number: DBH.1358