Glass mosaic bowl

Unknown

1st half of 1st century CE · Glass · Greek and Roman Art

Opaque orange and opaque red. Slightly flaring vertical rim, with rounded edge; convex curving side; deeply indented base ring around slight convex bottom. Marbled mosaic pattern formed from polygonal sections of a single cane in orange with red streaks. On interior, a single horizontal groove below rim, another single groove around upward ridge of base ring, and on bottom a small raised circle around a central dot; on exterior, a band of two raised lines flanking a groove halfway down side, another raised line flanked by two grooves outside base ring, and another band of two raised lines flanking a groove on bottom. Broken and repaired with areas of fill in rim; dulling, some whitish weathering with green weathering of red streaks. The rich colors of the marbling decoration on this bowl may have been meant to imitate semiprecious stone, but it finds its closest parallel in pottery produced in southern Gaul in ca. A.D. 50.

Artist

Unknown

Date

1st half of 1st century CE

Medium

Glass

Culture

Roman, Eastern Mediterranean

Department

Greek and Roman Art

Credit line

Gift of J. Pierpont Morgan, 1917