Piriform Bottle

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Piriform Bottle

Place of OriginCyprus, excavated by 1873

Date2nd-3rd century CE

DimensionsGlass Dimensions: 4 11/16 × 1 1/8 × 2 15/16 in. (11.9 × 2.9 × 7.5 cm)

Mediumglass

ClassificationGlass

Object number

1916.158

Not on View

DescriptionThis piriform bottle (Isings 1957, Form 16 or 28) is made of medium thin, transparent decolored or natural green glass. The vessel is free-blown and tooled, with no visible pontil mark. The glass contains small vertical linear bubbles in the neck, and there is an unintentional crimp extending from the rim to the base of the neck. The rim is carefully folded outward, upward, inward, and flattened to form a broad brim. A tall cylindrical neck, slightly constricted at its base, leads to a pear-shaped (piriform) body that tapers to a flattened base with a shallow central depression.

Label TextThis small object marks a formative moment in the Toledo Museum of Art’s “teenage years.” In 1916, the museum made a deliberate decision to collect Greek and Roman antiquities more systematically, acquiring a group of eighty-eight ceramic, bronze, and glass objects from the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. All were excavated on Cyprus by Luigi Palma di Cesnola (1832–1904), the Met’s first president, and entered Toledo’s collection when the institution was still defining the scope of its antiquities holdings.

The bronze objects (1916.134–1916.149) reflect Cyprus’s early mastery of copper, a resource so central to the island that its Latin name, cuprum, derives from Cyprus itself. Bronze Age weapons, including a dagger (1916.149), attest to early casting traditions, while later Roman-period tools reveal long-term continuity in everyday practices. Tweezers (1916.147), cosmetic implements (1916.144–145), mirrors (1916.135–136), and a rare buckle (1916.146) point to routines of personal care across centuries.

The glass vessels (1916.150–1916.165) document a different technological transformation. Most are Roman blown glass, produced after the invention of the blowpipe in the first century BCE, a development that shifted glassmaking from a luxury craft to large-scale production. One earlier ribbed bowl (1916.153), formed by slumping glass over a mold, preserves an older and more labor-intensive technique.

The acquisition also included several dozen ceramic vessels. Over time, the scope of the museum’s collection evolved, and most of these ceramics were later deaccessioned. Two Archaic vessels from Cyprus, a stamnos (1916.79) and an oinochoe (1916.96), remain in the collection as representatives of this early phase of collecting.