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A large Roman aubergine glass splashed aryballos image 1
A large Roman aubergine glass splashed aryballos image 2
Lot 129*

A large Roman aubergine glass splashed aryballos

Antiquities
6 July 2023, 11:00 BST
London, New Bond Street

£20,000 - £30,000

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A large Roman aubergine glass splashed aryballos
Circa mid 1st Century A.D.
12cm high

Footnotes

Provenance:
Jean-Hubert Demeulenaere collection, Paris, France.
Collection de Mr D.; Loudmer, Hôtel Drouot, Paris, 2-4 June 1985, lot 98.
Professor and Mrs Claude Dufourmentel collection, Paris, France.
Anonymous sale; Artcurial, Paris, 12 May 2014, lot 105.
The Nico F. Bijnsdorp Collection (NFB 298), acquired from the above from the above.

Exhibited:
The National Museum of Antiquities, Leiden (NL), "GLASS", 1 June 2020 – 28 February 2021.

The "splashed" appearance was achieved by attaching colored chips, light blue and white in the case of the present lot, to a glass vessel, before reheating and marvering the surface and finally further inflating the vessel to the finished size. It has been suggested that such "splashed" vessels may have been intended to imitate the mosaic glass of the 1st Century B.C., which was already highly prized by the early Julio-Claudian period. This technique was short-lived - according to Whitehouse, 'a cautious interpretation of the available evidence suggests a starting date in the early first century, a peak of production around 50, and a terminal date around 70' (D. Whitehouse, Roman Glass in the Corning Museum of Glass, vol. 1, Corning, 1997, p. 207).

This lot combines an incredibly rare technique with an unusual form: very few of the known 'splashed' vessels are aryballoi, and even fewer are as large as this example. Two smaller aubergine examples have been sold at Christie's: one in London as part of the Shlomo Moussaieff collection in July 2016, lot 215, another in New York on 8th June 2004, lot 15. A third, larger example was sold as part of the Benzian collection at Sotheby's, London, 7 July 1994, lot 134.

Additional information

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