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Barnebys HQ
Brahegatan 10
BOX 5038
114 37 Stockholm
All auctions / Glass / 10 Ancient Roman Glass Spindle Whorl Beads, Trailed & Combed Patterns
Roman Empire, Imperial era. A group of ten glass spindle whorl beads of annular and biconical form, each made by winding a trail of glass in a spiral around a rod. Colors include cobalt and pale blue, translucent green and olive, opaque black, yellow, gray, and white. Several carry a contrasting trail applied to the upper surface in a spiral running from the perforation to the outer edge. One black bead has a white trail tooled with seven unevenly spaced downward strokes to form a feather pattern. Another combines black glass with red, and a further example pairs black with turquoise. Each is pierced through the center for mounting on a spindle shaft or for stringing. The spindle whorl is one of the most persistent tools in human material culture: a weighted disc that converts a spinning stick into a flywheel, allowing a spinner to draw fiber into thread continuously and with even tension. Glass examples flourished in the Roman Empire, Islamic Near East , and Central Asia, where glassworkers wound hot gathers around a mandrel and decorated them with trails of contrasting metal-oxide-colored glass, then rolled the object on a flat marver so the trails sank level with the surface. Dragging a point through those trails while still hot produced the feathered or festooned patterns seen here. Item # 204548
Estimate:$300
To the auctionView all items fromArtemis Fine ArtsorGlass
Estimate:
$300
Figurine Capitaine Haddock repeint Objectif Lune 12 cm - Lot 224
09/20/2026
$18.34
Est: $22.97
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