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Unguent Bottle (Alabastron)

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Unguent Bottle (Alabastron)

Place of OriginEastern Mediterranean, possibly from Rhodes, Greece
Date5th century BCE
DimensionsH: 3 5/8 in. (9.2 cm); Diam: 1 1/16 in. (2.7 cm); Max Diam of Body: 1 in. (2.6 cm)
Mediumglass
ClassificationGlass
Credit LineGift of Edward Drummond Libbey
Object number
1923.145
Not on View
DescriptionThis alabastron is made of opaque dark brown glass streaked with opaque red and decorated with opaque yellow and opaque turquoise-blue threads. It features a broad horizontal rim-disk, a cylindrical neck, a pronounced rounded shoulder, and a straight-sided cylindrical body terminating in an uneven, flat bottom. Below the shoulder are two long vertical ring handles with knobbed tails, made of the same opaque dark brown glass and placed at different heights on the body. An unmarvered opaque yellow thread is attached at the edge of the rim-disk. A second opaque yellow thread and an opaque turquoise-blue thread, both marvered, are applied beginning on the neck and wound spirally in close-set, nearly horizontal lines down to the center of the bottom. The vessel was made using the core-forming technique, with applied rim-disk, handles, and applied marvered and unmarvered threads.
Published ReferencesGrose, 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. 91, pp. 141-142.

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