Glass aryballos (perfume bottle)

Unknown

5th century BCE · Glass · Greek and Roman Art

Opaque dark purple, appearing black, with lighter red brown streaks, with same color handles; trails in opaque yellow and opaque turquoise blue. Inward-sloping rim-disk with rough protruding edge to mouth; short concave neck; broad sloping shoulder; almost spherical body; convex, slightly uneven bottom; two ring handles with knobbed tails extend from shoulder to neck and underside of rim-disk. A yellow trail applied to outer edge of rim-disk, with top of neck folded over part of trail; yellow and turquoise blue trails applied in a band around the upper half of body and tooled into a close-set zigzag pattern, formed by uneven, shallow vertical tooling indents; below this, two separate yellow and turquoise blue trails added vertically to lower body and wound once round bottom in an irregular swirl; one raised yellow blob on edge of shoulder on one side. Intact, except for one small chip in rim-disk; dulling, pitting, and heavily weathered with patches of milky white iridescence.

Artist

Unknown

Date

5th century BCE

Medium

Glass

Culture

Greek, Eastern Mediterranean

Department

Greek and Roman Art

Credit line

Edward C. Moore Collection, Bequest of Edward C. Moore, 1891