Unguent Bottle (Footed Jar)

Place of OriginEastern Mediterranean or Italy

Date3rd century BCE

DimensionsH: 3 1/2 in. (8.9 cm); Rim Diam: 15/16 in. (2.4 cm); Diam: 1 5/16 in. (3.3 cm)

MediumCore-formed; applied rim-disk, handles, and foot; applied marvered threads. Short vertical indentations on the shoulder caused by the tooling of the zigzags.

ClassificationGlass

Credit LineGift of Edward Drummond Libbey

Object number

1923.334

Not on View

DescriptionSmall unguent bottle, also described as a footed jar, made from cobalt-blue glass with opaque yellow (appearing orangish) and opaque white decoration. It features a short, uneven horizontal rim-disk with a rounded edge, a tall cylindrical neck, and a broad shoulder meeting the neck at a nearly right angle. The ovoid body tapers to a pointed base, which rests on a tall, flaring cobalt-blue foot with a small depression in the center of its flat underside. Two upright cobalt-blue disk handles, folded upward in half, are applied below the shoulder. Decoration consists of a marvered yellow thread encircling part of the rim-disk. A marvered white thread and a second yellow thread begin on the neck and are wound diagonally in wavy lines to the shoulder. These threads are then tooled into shallow zigzag motifs at mid-body, followed by nearly horizontal loops around the lower body. The white thread continues diagonally to the base, where it disappears under the foot.

Published ReferencesHayes, John W., Roman and Pre-Roman Glass in the Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto, 1975, p. 14.

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. 161, p. 167, repr. (col.) p. 106.