alabastron
- Museum number
- 1893,1009.10
- Description
-
Core-formed glass alabastron.
Opaque white trails and handles, opaque dull green body.
Unusually thick rim-disc with rounded edge and tool-marks on upper and under surfaces; no neck; long, drop-shaped body expanding downward from rim to rounded bottom. Two 'bead' ring-handles, 4 cm below rim.
Marvered white trail dropped on underneath rim, wound spirally to bottom of body and combed to form eight vertical strips of inverted festoons, the ends combed over on to bottom to simulate an eight-petalled 'rosette'.
Core-formed; rim-disc trailed on and tooled. Handles appear to be oblate beads, applied lightly to the hot surface of the vessel.
- Production date
- 400BC-275BC
- Dimensions
-
Diameter: 3.40 centimetres (body, max)
-
Diameter: 2.70 centimetres (rim)
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Height: 13.60 centimetres
- Curator's comments
- BM Glass
Fossing 1940, 64, note 1, fig. 38.
The shape of this piece is so far without parallel, having applied beads as ring-handles, a thick rim-disc, no neck and long, drop-shaped body decorated with closely-set inverted festoons. Fossing (1940, 64) notes this piece in connection with an example in AM Oxford (his fig. 37), which is comparable with the alabastra, BM Glass 141-6, and calls it 'a curious variation, undoubtedly a subsequent development of the type, entirely devoid of any real neck and with handles consisting of round ears without the usual downward prolongation'. He entirely misunderstood the handles, but he was right in believing it to be a development of the shape of those with which he compared it. It need not, however, be much later and could well belong chronologically to the second half of the 5th century, as its discovery in a tomb at Eretria along with four typical glasses would suggest. Yet its decoration is more akin to the 4th-century styles associated with a later group, and provides a reason for listing it here with these other anomalous types, even though logic might suggest moving it into an earlier group, in line with its fellows in the Eretria tomb-group.
- Location
- On display (G19/dc2)
- Condition
- One handle fragmentary, the other almost totally missing; chips out of body. Some large strain-cracks. Much lime-encrustation. Some milky weathering with pitting and iridescence, but parts of surface retain pristine sheen.
- Acquisition date
- 1893
- Department
- Greek and Roman
- Registration number
- 1893,1009.10
- Additional IDs
-
Miscellaneous number: DBH.0108 (Harden number)