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Barnebys HQ
Brahegatan 10
BOX 5038
114 37 Stockholm
All auctions / Glass / 3 Roman Glass Vessels - Candlestick Flask, Unguentarium, & Jar
Eastern Mediterranean, Levant, Roman to Byzantine period. A trio of free-blown glass vessels, each presented on its own acrylic display stand. Tallest is a candlestick unguentarium, its slender tubular neck rising from a broad, shallow splayed body; weathering has laid a crust of soil and silvery iridescence along the shaft. Beside it stands a conical flask with a folded rim and pinched neck ring, the wall thinning toward a rounded base and veiled in gray earthen film. Smallest is a squat globular jar with a thick infolded mouth, its surface flaring into rainbow and violet iridescence where burial chemistry leached the alkali. Vessels of this kind held perfumed oils, unguents, and cosmetics, and accompanied the dead into tombs across the Levant, where such glass was produced in quantity for both household and funerary use. The iridescence prized on ancient glass is a byproduct of decay, not of manufacture. Centuries of contact with damp soil leach sodium and potassium from the surface, leaving behind microscopically thin laminae of silica that refract light into the silver, violet, and spectral sheens visible here. Roman glassmakers of the Syro-Palestinian coast pioneered free-blowing in the first century BCE, and the technique made glass affordable for the first time: the sand of the Belus River near Akko supplied the raw batch, and workshops turned out unguentaria by the thousand. The elongated "candlestick" type, named for its resemblance to a taper in a holder, is a later Roman form generally placed in the first through third centuries CE. Item # 205134
Estimate:$300
To the auctionView all items fromArtemis Fine ArtsorGlass
Estimate:
$300
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A COBALT BLUE MOLDED GLASS JUGLET, EASTERN MEDITERRANEAN, 1ST–3RD CENTURY AD
10/09/2026
$1,360.86
Eastern Mediterranean Roman Glass Unguentarium, 1st to 3rd Century AD
08/24/2026
$217
Est: $115
