Glass gold-band mosaic bottle
An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art
Translucent cobalt blue, turquoise green, and purple, opaque white, and colorless encasing shattered gold leaf. Everted, horizontal rim with beveled underside to lip; cylindrical neck; squat globular body; flat bottom. Gold-band mosaic pattern formed from a single serpentine length of layered canes formed in the following order: green outlined in white and purple, colorless with gold leaf, and blue outlined in white and purple; the length is wound three times round body, being fused together across bottom. A single fine horizontal line incised on upper surface of rim near outer edge; a band of two parallel horizontal grooves around top body; and another single horizontal groove on body at point of greatest diameter. Intact, except for deep, weathered chips in side of body; slight dulling and pitting, iridescence, whitish weathering, and areas of soil encrustation. Rotary grinding marks on exterior. Small bottles and lidded pyxides (boxes) in mosaic and luxury gold-band glass were made during the Julio-Claudian period. But as glass-blowing became more widespread during the mid-1st century, they were quickly supplanted by free-blown versions, often in more transparent glass that allowed one to see the contents.
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.