Syria or Palestine

This is the most elaborate trail-decorated jar known from the late Eastern Roman Empire. A tour de force of the glassmaker’s technique, it demonstrates the artist’s exceptional skill in working the hot glass and manipulating it quickly without deforming the overall shape and the incredibly complex applied decoration. Keep in mind the speed with which the glassmaker would have had to add the individual bits of glass to create all of the handles and decorative embellishments.

 

Colorless glass with greenish tinge, applied trails of dark greenish blue glass, blown, trail-decorated, and tooled late 4th-5th century
Gift of Edward Drummond Libbey, 1923.1211