Glass lentoid aryballos (perfume bottle)

Eastern Mediterranean or Italian

On view at The Met Fifth Avenue in Gallery 158

Translucent cobalt blue, with handles, coils, and feet in same color; trails in opaque yellow, opaque white, and opaque turquoise blue.

Broad rim-disk, sloping inward, made as a spiral coil around top of neck; cylindrical neck, tapering downward; broad, almost horizontal shoulder with rounded outer edge; flattened globular body, with convex sides; shallow convex bottom; two rolled cylindrical feet on either side of bottom; two vertical ring handles attached to shoulder; two coils running down sides between handles and feet.

An unmarvered fine yellow trail attached at the edge of rim-disk; another similar yellow trail wound spirally five times round neck; on body, bands of yellow, white, and turquoise blue trails tooled into a feather pattern in thirteen vertical patterns with alternating upward and downward strokes; on one side applied blob of blue glass decorated with a yellow circle smoothed into top of body; coils decorated with a double spiralling white trail.

Body intact, but one of feet and most of one coil missing; side covered with creamy brown weathering, with iridescence, faint weathering and some pitting elsewhere.

Among the rarer shapes of Mediterranean Group II vessels are the tall, slender oinochoe (pitcher) with a trefoil spout and the lentoid aryballos with twisted glass canes running between the ring handles.

Glass lentoid aryballos (perfume bottle), Glass, Eastern Mediterranean or Italian

This image cannot be enlarged, viewed at full screen, or downloaded.

Open Access

As part of the Met's Open Access policy, you can freely copy, modify and distribute this image, even for commercial purposes.

API

Public domain data for this object can also be accessed using the Met's Open Access API.