ROMAN GLASS FLASK WITH TRAILED HANDLES
Ca. 100-200 AD.
A beautiful blown flask with an ovoid-shaped body, funnel-shaped neck with ribbed horizontal decoration, and two vertical trailed handles. Good condition, beautiful iridescence. The accretions (also known as 'weathering crusts') that are visible on the vessel are a result of age – the item has spent hundreds of years in the ground – and chemical reactions with the soil in which it was buried. While glass-making had been practised for centuries, the Romans invented the glassblowing technique in the 1st century BC, which revolutionized this craft. Roman glassmakers reached incredible artistic heights with both free-blown vessels and mould blown forms and decorations. To find out more about glass objects in the Roman world, Bayley, J., Freestone, I., & Jackson, C. (2015). Glass of the Roman World. Oxford And Philadelphia: Oxbow Books. Fleming, Stuart J. Roman Glass: Reflections on Cultural Change. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Museum, 1999.
Size: L:130mm / W:83mm ; 99.6g
Provenance: From the private collection of an Essex gentleman; previously in an old British Collection, formed in the 1980s.
Estimate: GBP 750 - 1500