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

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