
Francesca Hickin
Head of Department
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£600 - £800
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Head of Department
Provenance:
Anonymous sale; Christie's, London, 23 April 1980, lot 13.
Jack Alfred Goldhill collection, UK, acquired from the above sale; and thence by descent to the present owner.
Such vessels have been excavated in contexts suggesting that they were used as lamps and found with traces of oil remaining inside. The lamp would have contained water with oil and a wick floating on top, and would have been suspended in a metal stand. Glasses of this type are in numerous museum collections; see an example in A. Oliver Jr, Ancient Glass in the Carnegie Museum of Natural History, Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, 1980, no. 176.