Glass lentoid aryballos (perfume bottle)

Greek

On view at The Met Fifth Avenue in Gallery 171

Translucent honey brown, with same color handles and cord; trails and blobs in opaque white.
Broad flat rim-disk with rounded edge and radiating tooling marks on upper surface; slender cylindrical neck, tapering downwards; sloping shoulder; globular lentoid body; convex bottom; two large vertical ring handles attached to shoulder.
A trail attached at edge of rim-disk; a circular marvered blob applied to both faces of body; a large cord, twisted together with a white trail, attached under handles runs down sides and across bottom.
Broken and repaired, with large chip in one side of body; some pitting, large patches of milky white weathering and iridescence.

Together with the other two similar aryballoi displayed here (17.194.309 and 30.115.7), this bottle belongs to a small group of core-formed glass that may have been made in southern Italy, Sicily, or even Carthage. It has also been suggested that these bottles may have been worn as amuletic pendants around the neck.

Glass lentoid aryballos (perfume bottle), Glass, Greek

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.