Bulbous Bottle with Multiple Handles

Expand

IIIFView PDF

Bulbous Bottle with Multiple Handles

Place of OriginAncient Rome, Palestine

DateSixth century

DimensionsH: 8 1/16 in. (20.4 cm); Diam: 2 1/16 in. (4 cm)

MediumGlass; free blown and tooled.

ClassificationGlass

Credit LineGift of Edward Drummond Libbey

Object number

1923.1215

Not on View

DescriptionThis multiple-handled bulbous bottle is free-blown from translucent, rather heavy greenish glass that is medium thick, with numerous small and medium-sized ovoid and vertically elongated bubbles and some large bubbles in the lower body. The glass is transparent natural yellowish green (between 10 GY 4/4 and 10 GY 5/2), with similarly colored translucent handles, thread, and pad base. The pontil mark is about 2.2 cm in diameter, with added thread and excess glass at the tips of the handles clipped off. The rim is rounded and thickened in flame with a tool mark on the interior, and the tall tubular neck rises from a gently sloping shoulder above an elongated pear-shaped body that is contracted toward the bottom and stands on a low flaring pad foot. The pad base shows slanting tool marks on the interior and exterior. Six angular coil handles are applied to the shoulder and attached to the lower part of the neck, arcaded with six separate coils to make a second tier, which is topped by four angular coil side handles attached below the rim and folded downward, inward, and upward to form a closed loop, then bent inward over the rim and flattened. Around the neck from above the shoulder to the rim are fourteen revolutions of thread trailed upward from left to right. This vessel is classified as a Multiple-handled Bottle Class VG3b.