Glass alabastron (perfume bottle)

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Translucent pale honey brown, with handles in darker honey brown; trails in opaque yellow, opaque turquoise blue, and opaque white. Broad horizontal rim-disk, with radiating tooling marks on underside; cylindrical neck, expanding downwards; narrow sloping shoulder; straight-sided cylindrical body, with slight upward taper; convex bottom; below shoulder, two vertical ring handles, not pierced through, with short pointed trails, applied over trail pattern. Traces of a fine (yellow ?) trail attached to lower edge of rim-disk; on body, alternating bands of yellow, turquoise, and white, tooled from shoulder to undercurve at bottom into a close-set feather pattern in eleven vertical panels with alternating upward and downward strokes. Broken and repaired around body, with several holes and gaps in joins; dulling, some deep pitting holes, and creamy iridescent weathering.

Greek and Roman Art

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The Museum's collection of Greek and Roman art comprises more than thirty thousand works ranging in date from the Neolithic period (ca. 4500 B.C.) to the time of the Roman emperor Constantine's conversion to Christianity in A.D. 312. It includes the art of many cultures and is among the most comprehensive in North America. The geographic regions represented are Greece and Italy, but not as delimited by modern political frontiers: Greek colonies were established around the Mediterranean basin and on the shores of the Black Sea, and Cyprus became increasingly Hellenized. For Roman art, the geographical limits coincide with the expansion of the Roman Empire. The department also exhibits the art of prehistoric Greece (Helladic, Cycladic, and Minoan) and pre-Roman art of Italic peoples, notably the Etruscans.

Metropolitan Museum of Art