Footnotes

Provenance:
Arpot Wilma collection, Maastricht.
with Harmakhis Archeologie, Brussels, March 2018.

Mould blown vessels in the form of bunches of grapes were made both in the Eastern and Western parts of the Roman Empire, but bottles found in the west usually have two handles while those in the east have none. This type of two-handled mould-blown flask decorated with a realistic bunch of grapes is more typical of production in the western part of the Roman Empire and, more specifically, Gaul and Germania, with Cologne as one of several different possible sources.

As a grape-flask this lot belongs to Isings' Form 91a although here the form of the bunch of grapes is more trilobed than piriform, and with a vestigial leaf to each side (C. Isings, Roman Glass from Dated Finds, Groningen/Djakarta, 1957, pp. 108-9). For a longer discussion around a group of these grape-flasks with looped handles found in the vicinity of Poitiers, cf. D. Simon-Hiernard, Verres d'époque romaine. Collection des Musées de Poitiers, Poitiers, 2000, pp. 363-70. Other examples include a similarly-coloured darker green two-handled flask from a tomb in the necropolis at Épiais-Rhus dated to the second half of the 2nd Century (N. Vanpeene, Verrerie de la Nécropole d'Épiais-Rhus (Val-d'Oise), Guiry-en-Vexin, 1993, pp. 40-1, no. 042, illus. front cover) and a colourless example from Arles (D. Foy, Les verres antiques d'Arles, la collection du Musée départmental Arles antique, Paris, 2010, pp. 286-7, no. 509).

Although very rare as a type, these grape-flasks are well-known and much desired by collectors as the first example was found in 1770 in a mid-2nd to early 3rd Century sarcophagus in the rue de la Tranchée in Poitiers. Furthermore, this example is similarly decorated like the Bonham's example, with a representation of a vine leaf at the top in the middle of both sides, rather than on the edges. The Bonhams' example is a more restrained version, where the body resembles more the bunch of grapes found on footed examples (Isings Form 91b, ibid. p. 109) from Cologne, and the handles are more simple, without the additional loops at the top.