Glass bowl with fluted decoration

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Semi-opaque colorless with yellowish tinge. Outsplayed rounded rim; concave neck; deep convex side tapering slightly downward to flattish convex bottom. On exterior, a band of two horizontal grooves around lower part of neck; a series of fifty-four shallow-cut vertical flutes on side extending from neck to bottom; below this another band of two horizontal grooves around bottom of side surrounding an eight-pointed star pattern. Intact, but one small internal crack in side; many pinprick bubbles; dulling, pitting, and faint patches of brownish weathering. Rotary grinding marks on interior. With the decline of the core-formed glass industry in the third century B.C., casting glass in a mold became the favored technique for making luxury glass vessels.

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