Glass juglet with vertical ribbing

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Translucent cobalt blue, with colorless handle. Everted rim, folded over and in; uneven cylindrical neck; globular but slightly lentoid body; circular low base with rounded edge; uneven, flat bottom; rod handle attached in a large claw pad to top of body, drawn up and out, turned in and trailed onto top of neck and underside of rim, with vertical loop above rim. One continuous mold seam around body, but misaligned causing one side of bottom to be higher than the other. On body, twenty-two vertical rounded ribs. Intact; pinprick bubbles; pitting, patches of weathering, and brilliant iridescence. "Melon-shaped" bottles form a relatively rare type of early mold-blown glass, probably made in Syria. Several examples are recorded from ancient cemetery sites in Armenia, Georgia, and the Crimea, whereas the type is not known in the western half of the Roman empire.

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