Unguent Bottle (Alabastron)

Place of OriginEastern Mediterranean or Italy; Reportedly found on Cyprus

DateProbably 6th Century BCE

DimensionsH: 5 in. (12.7 cm); Max Diam: 1 1/32 in. (2.6 cm)

MediumGlass; Core-formed; applied handles; applied partly marvered and unmarvered threads.

ClassificationGlass

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

Object number

1980.1001

Not on View

DescriptionAlabastron. Dark yellowish-green ground (appearing black) with opaque yellow decoration. Tall, straight-sided cylindrical body, with distinct upward taper; vertical jagged lip at the upper end of the body; convex pointed bottom. Two vertical yellowish-green coil handles on the upper part of the body, each with a depression facing outward but in opposite directions. Just below the lip, a wide unmarvered opaque yellow coil wound horizontally once around the vessel, as if to serve as a rim; below, another opaque yellow thread, partly marvered, begun and wound spirally, at first in almost horizontal lines, then tooled into a shallow, close-set zigzag pattern to the bottom, where it is wound horizontally to the center of the bottom. Shallow, vertical depressions on the body caused by the tooling of the zigzags.

Published References"Recent Important Acquisitions," Journal of Glass Studies 23, 1981, p. 91, fig. 3.

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. 29, p. 85, Repr. (col.) p. 69.

Brown, Heather Lemonedes et al., The Keithley Collection at the Cleveland Museum of Art,, Cleveland Museum of Art, 2022, fig. 30 (col.), p. 200.