Appliqués or Beads

Place of OriginGreece, probably Peloponnesos or from Crete

DateProbably Late Helladic III, about the 14th-12th century BCE

DimensionsL: 11 in. (27.9 cm); W: 7/8 in (2.2 cm); L (lozenge-shaped spacer beads): 3/4 in. (1.9 cm); L (barrel-shaped spacer beads): 11/16 in. (1.7 cm)

MediumCast in open, one-piece molds; spacer beads cast and cut.

ClassificationGlass

Credit LinePurchased with funds from the Libbey Endowment, Gift of Edward Drummond Libbey

Object number

1953.139

Not on View

DescriptionEight circular rosettes separated by seven pairs of faience space beads. Rosettes are dark blue. Upperside convex but uneven, with eight petals, each formed by two raised concentric, u-shaped ridges moving away from a raised domical center; underside flat or slightly uneven. Each rosette has two parallel transverse threadholes. The faience spacer beads are of two varieties: three pairs are opaque light blue and lozenge-shaped, almost flat on the upper- and undersides with two parallel central grooves and a diamond-shaped grooved along the outside edge; the other four pairs are opaque turquoise blue and barrel-shaped (some four-sided), with several deep horizontal grooves.

Published ReferencesRiefstahl, Rudolf M., "Ancient and Near Eastern Glass," Toledo Museum of Art Museum News 4, no. 2, 1961, p. 29.

Riefstahl, Rudolf M., "The Complexities of Ancient Glass," Apollo 86, 1967, pp. 429-430, fig 4.

Labino, Dominick, Visual Art in Glass, Dubuque, Iowa, 1968, pp. 17-18, fig. 6.

Engle, A., "Ancient Glass in Its Context," Readings in Glass History, no. 10, Jerusalem, 1978, p. 24, ill.

Grose, David F., "Ancient Glass," Toledo Museum of Art Museum News 20, no. 3, 1978, p. 71, fig. 4.

Grose, David F., "The Origins and Early History of Glass," in The History of Glass, eds. Dan Klein and Ward Lloyd, London, 1984, p. 11, ill.

Grose, David F., Early Ancient Glass: Core-formed, Rod-Formed, and Cast Vessels and Objects from the Late Bronze Age to the Early Roman Empire, 1600 B. C. to A. D. 50, New York, Hudson Hills Press in association with the Toledo Museum of Art, 1989, Cat. no. 25, p. 65, repr. (col.) p. 44.

Exhibition HistorySmith College Museum of Art, Northhampton, MA, A Land Called Crete; Minoan and Mycenaean Art from American and European Private and Public Collections, ex. cat., 1967, no. 55.

Hackens, T. and R. Winkes, eds., Gold Jewelry: Craft, Style, and Meaning from Mycenae to Constantinopolis, ex. cat., Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, Providence, RI, February-April 1983, Louvain, 1983, p. 42, no. 5 (W. E. Mierse).