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Glass amphoriskos (perfume bottle)

2nd–1st century BCE
On view at The Met Fifth Avenue in Gallery 162
Translucent yellowish green; base-knob and handles in translucent light green; trails in opaque greyish light blue and opaque white.
Uneven inward-sloping rim-disk, with projecting jagged edge to mouth and tooled indent around underside; tall cylindrical neck, tapering upward; sloping shoulder; elongated piriform body; pointed bottom; spherical base-knob with short cylindrical stem; two vertical s-shaped rod handles applied over trail decoration in folded pads across shoulder, drawn up to base of neck and pressed onto neck below rim-disk.
A light blue trail and a white trail applied to underside of rim, wound down in a spiral, sometimes as alternating lines, sometimes with white overlaying blue, around neck and shoulder to body, then tooled into a close-set festoon pattern with thirty-four upward strokes, continuing in a plain spiral around lower part of body with white trail getting thicker, ending under knob-base.
Broken and repaired on body with some minor chips, but parts of both handles missing; pitting and dulling, with patches of brownish weathering.

Artwork Details

Object Information
  • Title: Glass amphoriskos (perfume bottle)
  • Period: Hellenistic
  • Date: 2nd–1st century BCE
  • Culture: Greek, Eastern Mediterranean
  • Medium: Glass; core-formed, Group III
  • Dimensions: 6 1/8 × 2 9/16 × 2 1/4 in. (15.6 × 6.5 × 5.8 cm)
    Diam. of rim: 1 1/8 in. (2.9 cm)
  • Classification: Glass
  • Credit Line: Gift of J. Pierpont Morgan, 1917
  • Object Number: 17.194.594
  • Curatorial Department: Greek and Roman Art
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