FIVE MYCENAEAN BLUE GLASS BEADS CIRCA 1400-1200 B.C.

拍品描述

FIVE MYCENAEAN BLUE GLASS RELIEF BEADS, GREECE, CIRCA 1400-1200 B.C. A group of five mould-formed cobalt blue glass beads of flattened rectangular and fragmentary form, each pierced longitudinally for suspension and decorated in low relief on the outer face. The first, of tapering rectangular shape, carries a vertical row of three concentric-circle bosses above a plain register terminating in a fringed lower edge, the surface heavily encrusted and iridescent with a broad band of ochre weathering across the centre. The second, of rectangular form, presents three concentric-circle roundels aligned vertically against a plain ground, the cobalt matrix retaining strong translucency where the weathering crust has been lost. The third, the largest and most saturated in colour, is decorated with two eight-petalled rosettes set one above the other within a ribbed and vertically fluted border. The fourth, a broken corner fragment, preserves part of a curvilinear chevron or wave pattern flanked by rows of raised dots. The fifth, of small oblong form and pierced at both ends, is worked with a pair of confronted volutes or scrolls. All five show extensive earthen deposits, patches of silvery iridescence, and the characteristic pitting associated with long burial. The repertoire of concentric circles, eight-petalled rosettes and volutes represented across the group corresponds directly to the standard relief-bead types produced in the Aegean palatial workshops of the Late Helladic period. Such beads were formed by pressing hot glass into open steatite or terracotta moulds, the same moulds in several instances known to have been used interchangeably for glass and for gold foil. The rosette in particular is a Mycenaean signifier of high status, appearing on grave stelai, ivory inlays and gold diadems, while the concentric-circle boss derives from a wider Aegean vocabulary of solar and shield motifs. Beads of these forms were strung into elaborate necklaces and pectoral collars, or sewn onto textiles as dress ornaments, and are recovered principally from chamber tombs and shaft graves across the Argolid, Attica, Boeotia and the Peloponnese. Glass, or kyanos as it is named in the Linear B tablets from Pylos and Mycenae, was among the most highly valued materials of the Late Bronze Age Aegean. The cobalt-blue colouration was intended to imitate lapis lazuli, itself imported at extraordinary cost from Badakhshan, and the raw glass ingots that supplied the Mycenaean workshops arrived through Levantine and Egyptian intermediaries, as attested by the cobalt-blue ingots recovered from the Uluburun shipwreck. The manufacture of relief beads in glass thus represents a deliberate substitution of a semi-precious stone by a technologically prestigious synthetic material, one whose production was controlled at the palatial level and whose distribution was closely tied to elite burial practice. This group exemplifies the standard vocabulary of Mycenaean glass ornament in miniature, preserving in a single assemblage the three principal motifs, the rosette, the concentric circle and the volute, that defined palatial personal adornment in the fourteenth and thirteenth centuries B.C. As surviving fragments of what were once composite strung ornaments, they document both the ambition and the fragility of Late Bronze Age glassworking in the Aegean. Dimensions: Length of longest 3.1 cm

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