Spherical Bottle with Two Handles

Expand

IIIFView PDF

Spherical Bottle with Two Handles

Place of OriginAncient Rome

Dateabout 4th century CE

DimensionsH: 8 7/8 in. (22.6 cm); Rim Diam: 1 5/16 in. (3.4 cm); Body Diam: 4 1/8 in. (10.5 cm)

MediumGlass; free blown, applied handles, foot and decoration

ClassificationGlass

Credit LineGift of Edward Drummond Libbey

Object number

1923.1216

Not on View

DescriptionThis spherical bottle is free-blown from medium thin glass with vertically elongated bubbles in the neck and ovoid bubbles in the body, as well as black specks visible in the handles. The glass is transparent natural yellowish green (between 10 GY 4/4 and 5 G 5/2), with translucent similarly colored handles, thread, and pad base. The pontil mark measures approximately 1.8 cm in diameter. The vessel is tooled with added thread, and excess glass at the tips of the handles is clipped off and flattened. The rim is rounded in flame with a tool mark on the interior, and the tubular neck rises from a gently sloping shoulder above a spherical body. A pad base shows curving tool marks on both its exterior and interior. Two curving coil handles are applied to the shoulder and attached to the lower part of the neck, then trailed vertically up the neck to the rim. Around the lower neck is a single coil from left to right, and around the upper three-quarters of the neck are approximately nineteen revolutions of thread, though the point and direction of application cannot be determined.