Glass snake-thread dropper flask

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Greenish colorless; colorless, opaque yellow, and translucent turquoise green trails. Everted rim, folded over and in; neck funnel-shaped at top, then cylindrical with constriction on inside at base; squat piriform body; integral base ring; kick in bottom with traces of pontil scar. Three separate trails pressed on to body with notched upper surfaces; one colorless shaped like a serpent with a horned head and long spiral tail, similar trail in opaque yellow, and between these two a longer turquoise trail with similar head, humped body, and spiral tail passing below the yellow trail to form another panel on the other side of the colorless trail. Intact, except for internal cracks and one minor loss on yellow trail; pitting and iridescent weathering; black streaky inclusion in head of turquoise trail. The distinctive blue and yellow colors of the snake-thread trails mark this small flask out as a product of the late Roman glass factories at Cologne on the Rhine in Germany. The dropper-flask shape, however, is paralleled by numerous examples decorated with colorless trails, found principally in the Roman east.

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