A ROMAN GOLD-BAND GLASS MOSAIC PYXIS, CIRCA FIRST HALF OF 1ST CENTURY A.D

拍品描述

A ROMAN MOSAIC GLASS PYXIS, CIRCA FIRST HALF OF 1ST CENTURY A.D. Of short cylindrical form, the vertical walls rising from a flat base to a plain rim of the same diameter, the vessel constructed from fused canes of coloured glass arranged as vertical stripes. The palette alternates translucent emerald green, cobalt blue, amber, deep aubergine to near-black, and clear or colourless glass, the canes fused side by side and ground smooth to produce a continuous polychrome surface running from base to rim. The interior repeats the striped scheme, confirming the mosaic technique through the thickness of the wall rather than as an applied decoration. The surface bears extensive iridescence and weathering deposits, with silvery and creamy encrustations obscuring passages of the original colour and lending the whole a matte, mineralised quality characteristic of long burial. The vessel belongs to the family of Roman mosaic glass produced by fusing bundled or arranged canes and slumping the resulting blank over a former. In the striped variant seen here, lengths of monochrome cane were laid parallel, fused into a flat plaque, and then shaped while hot into a cylinder, the seam and the ground rim finished cold. The technique descends from Hellenistic cane-glass traditions of the eastern Mediterranean and was taken up by Italian and Syro-Palestinian workshops in the late first century B.C. and the early first century A.D., reaching its widest distribution in the decades either side of the mid-first century, before free-blowing displaced the labour-intensive mosaic methods for most tablewares. Glass of this kind was a luxury material in the early Imperial period. The coloured canes required separate batches of metal, each tinted with a specific mineral additive — cobalt for the blue, copper or iron for the greens, antimony and lead for the opaque whites and yellows, manganese for the aubergine — and the assembly and grinding of the finished vessel demanded a degree of workshop organisation that placed such pieces well above blown utilitarian wares in cost. Small cylindrical pyxides of this type served as containers for cosmetics, unguents, or small valuables, and are found in domestic and funerary contexts across the western provinces and Italy, frequently accompanied by their fitted lids, which are here lacking. This pyxis exemplifies the striped mosaic tradition of early Imperial Roman glass, in which colour is carried through the substance of the wall rather than applied to its surface. The retention of the full cane structure, visible on both faces, and the range of colours present in a piece of this modest scale place it within the more ambitious end of the small mosaic-glass repertoire of the period. Dimensions: Diameter x Height: 5 x 4.5cm

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