You are here
Narrow Piriform Unguentarium - 1968.02
A slender bottle of emerald greenish glass with strengthened lip and nipped-in neck. The base is slightly concave. Intact and in good condition.
Title: Narrow Piriform Unguentarium - 1968.02
Author or editor: J.R. Green
Culture or period: Roman Imperial
Date: First half 1st century AD.
Material: Glass
Object type: Unguentarium
Acquisition number: 1968.02
Dimensions: 28mm (w) x 97mm (h)
Origin region or location: Spain
Display case or on loan: 9
Keywords: Roman, Imperial, Glass, Western Mediterranean
Folio Fine Art Ltd (London), Catalogue Roman Glass (November 1967) no. 150 (ill.); J.R. Green with B. Rawson, Catalogue of Antiquities in the Australian National University, A.N.U. (Canberra, 1981) 113.
1968.02
Narrow Piriform Unguentarium
Purchased. Ht 9.7cm; diam. 2.8cm.
A slender bottle of emerald greenish glass with strengthened lip and nipped-in neck. The base is slightly concave. Intact and in good condition.
Bottles of this sort were made in great numbers for holding scent etc. from the early first to the early third century AD and they are found throughout the Roman world. Dark green glass was particularly popular in the first century AD, but glass colour could not be controlled very precisely in antiquity.
The type is Isings, Roman Glass from Dated Finds 24, Form 8. Compare G. De Tommaso, Ampullae vitreae (Rome 1990) types 647 and 70-71. See also O. Vessberg, “Roman Glass in Cyprus”, Opuscula Archaeologica 7, 1952, 140ff. and pl. IX, 28, and M.C. Calvi, I vetri romani del museo di Aquileia (Aquileia 1968) 111, pl. A, 12-13, where further references will be found. Vessberg suggested that the constriction between the body and neck had the practical function of providing a better hold for a fibre covering or for a carrying loop, but it would also have been useful in restricting the flow of expensive liquid from the bottle. It is nevertheless worth remembering that these vessels were often padded on the outside: see for instance Kisa, Das Glas im Altertume (Leipzig 1908) i, 25 fig. 12, for examples from Egypt with their padding preserved.
D. Whitehouse, Roman Glass in the Corning Museum of Glass, i (Corning NY, 1997) no. 247, is not dissimilar; he has good comments on the shape’s distribution. See further his nos 213, 217, 232, 234 and 236.
Julio-Claudian: earlier half of the first century AD. Brightly coloured fabrics – even naturally-coloured, but thick-walled – went out of fashion in the Flavian period. From the Western Mediterranean.
Folio Fine Art Ltd (London), Catalogue Roman Glass (November 1967) no. 150 (ill.); J.R. Green with B. Rawson, Catalogue of Antiquities in the Australian National University, A.N.U. (Canberra, 1981) 113.
