Roman Blue-Green Glass Cinerary Urn
£29,500
Code
10641
Roman blue-green glass cinerary urn
Circa 1st-2nd Century A.D
The collar rim folded outwards, with a pair of vertical 'M' shaped handles of thick trail
rising from the shoulder with some encircling tooling mark bands, the piriform body
tapering to the narrow splayed hollow foot.
In the early Roman Imperial Period cremation was the preferred method of burial in Italy
and the Northwest Provinces where the use of cinerary urns for holding the ashes was
common practice. Glass urns excavated from tombs in Italy, Gaul and Britain were
sometimes found protected within stone or lead containers, which may explain why so
many have survived intact.
Urns with this shape would have had conical lid, some which were pierced at the centre
and could have been used as a funnel, so that libations could be neatly poured into the
urn, again when the lid was inverted with the point facing downwards.
Literature: Cinerary urns with double arched handles can be seen at the Metropolitan
Museum of Art, New York, acc. no. 81.10.2a, b and 91.1.1297a, b. see an illustration of
an example from Carthage reproduced in F. Baratte, 'La verrerie dans l'afrique romaine:
état des questions', Kölner Jahrbuch für vor-und Frühgeschichte, vol. 22, 1989, p. 147, fig.
7
For other similar forms of urn in the Louvre cf. V. Arveiller-Dulong & M-D. Nenna, Les
Verres Antiques du Musée du Louvre, Paris, 2005, p. 170, fig. 479, and for the lid p.176,
fig. 505.
Provenance: Private collection USA, formed from the 1980s onwards.
Circa 1st-2nd Century A.D
The collar rim folded outwards, with a pair of vertical 'M' shaped handles of thick trail
rising from the shoulder with some encircling tooling mark bands, the piriform body
tapering to the narrow splayed hollow foot.
In the early Roman Imperial Period cremation was the preferred method of burial in Italy
and the Northwest Provinces where the use of cinerary urns for holding the ashes was
common practice. Glass urns excavated from tombs in Italy, Gaul and Britain were
sometimes found protected within stone or lead containers, which may explain why so
many have survived intact.
Urns with this shape would have had conical lid, some which were pierced at the centre
and could have been used as a funnel, so that libations could be neatly poured into the
urn, again when the lid was inverted with the point facing downwards.
Literature: Cinerary urns with double arched handles can be seen at the Metropolitan
Museum of Art, New York, acc. no. 81.10.2a, b and 91.1.1297a, b. see an illustration of
an example from Carthage reproduced in F. Baratte, 'La verrerie dans l'afrique romaine:
état des questions', Kölner Jahrbuch für vor-und Frühgeschichte, vol. 22, 1989, p. 147, fig.
7
For other similar forms of urn in the Louvre cf. V. Arveiller-Dulong & M-D. Nenna, Les
Verres Antiques du Musée du Louvre, Paris, 2005, p. 170, fig. 479, and for the lid p.176,
fig. 505.
Provenance: Private collection USA, formed from the 1980s onwards.
H 30.5cm x Dia. 28cm
H 12.01" x Dia. 11.03"
H 12.01" x Dia. 11.03"
