A pair of glass drinking cups

A pair of glass drinking cups

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Translucent cobalt blue, with same color handles; blobs in opaque white, red, pale blue, and yellow. Vertical rounded rim with collar below; body with concave sides, tapering downwards, then turned in at an angle to convex, slightly pointed bottom; low pedestal base applied from separate paraison, with splayed foot and knocked-off, unworked edge; two ribbed handles with central groove applied at bottom of sides, drawn up in a wide loop, curved in above rim, and pressed on to outer edge of rim. Irregular pattern of marvered blobs on body and applied base. Intact; iridescent weathering, dulling, and pitting, with some whitish encrustation, mainly on base and undercurve of body. The elegant shape of these drinking cups is enhanced by their vibrant blue color and the use of applied blobs of glass in contrasting colors. This type of decoration, in which chips of differently colored glass were applied to the vessel and then marvered into the surface, was used for a relatively short time during the mid-first century A.D. Their production may be attributed to workshops in northern Italy.

Greek and Roman Art

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

A pair of glass drinking cupsA pair of glass drinking cupsA pair of glass drinking cupsA pair of glass drinking cupsA pair of glass drinking cups

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.