Quadruple Tube with Looped Trails and Basket Handle

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Quadruple Tube with Looped Trails and Basket Handle

Place of OriginRoman Empire, Palestine

Date6th to early 7th century

DimensionsH: 6 11/16 in. (17.0 cm); Rim Diam: 2 1/16 in. (5.2 cm); Body Diam: 1 3/8 in. (3.4 cm)

MediumGlass; free-blown and tooled.

ClassificationGlass

Credit LineGift of Edward Drummond Libbey

Object number

1923.1314

Not on View

DescriptionThis free-blown and tooled glass vessel, classified as a Quadruple Tube IIG4a, consists of a rectangular body with four tubular compartments bundled together. The sides narrow toward a flattened base. The wall between two tubes is recessed deep into the interior. The rim is hollow and folded outward, upward, inward, and downward. The glass is transparent natural grayish green (near 10 GY 5/2 but slightly more yellow) with similarly colored translucent handle, looped trails, and thread decoration. The vessel is made of medium thin glass with a few vertically elongated bubbles in the body. The pontil mark, about 1.8 cm in diameter, retains the remains of the pontil wad. The body is pinched twice lengthwise. Four looped trails are set diagonally to the divisions of the compartments and applied about 2.5 cm above the base. Each trail touches down five times to the body to form five irregular loops and attaches to the rim, where they are folded inward, downward, upward, and outward to form a closed loop before folding inward over the rim. A flat, single-tiered curving basket handle made from a thick coil with a U-shaped section is applied across the rim, positioned over the division between compartments on the right side and attached to the rim between compartments on the left. Excess glass at the tips of the handle and trails is drawn back against the tops. On the body, from about 2.5 cm above the base to the rim, fifteen revolutions of thread are trailed on from left to right. The thread decoration was applied after the body was pinched.