Squat Conical Bottle

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Squat Conical Bottle

Place of OriginCyprus, excavated by 1873

Date200-250 CE

Dimensions6 3/4 × 1 9/16 × 3 3/4 in. (17.1 × 4 × 9.5 cm)

Mediumglass

ClassificationGlass

Object number

1916.150

Not on View

DescriptionThis squat conical bottle (Candlestick Class VIIIA"2e) is made from transparent natural pale green glass (5 G 7/2). The body contains a large vertically elongated bubble, with a few smaller bubbles of similar shape in the neck. The glass is thin throughout. The vessel was free-blown and tooled. A circular pontil wad remnant approximately 1.6 cm in diameter is present on the base. The lip is outsplayed with a hollow rim rolled inward. The neck is tall and tapering with a toolmark and slight constriction at its base. The broad, flat conical body makes up about one-sixth of the bottle’s total height. The base is concave.

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.