Francesca Hickin
Head of Department
Lot 24*
A late Roman glass lamp or cup
6 July 2021, 15:00 BST
London, New Bond Street£1,200 - £1,800
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Anna Marston
Associate Specialist
A late Roman glass lamp or cup
Circa 4th-5th Century A.D.
Of conical form, tapering to a rounded base, decorated with three encircling bands of wheel cut decoration flanking four applied and marvered cobalt blue oval blobs, 17cm high
Circa 4th-5th Century A.D.
Of conical form, tapering to a rounded base, decorated with three encircling bands of wheel cut decoration flanking four applied and marvered cobalt blue oval blobs, 17cm high
Footnotes
Provenance:
Private collection, USA, formed from the 1980s onwards.
Such vessels have been excavated in contexts suggesting that they were used as lamps and found with traces of oil remaining inside. The lamp would have contained water with oil and a wick floating on top, and would have been suspended in a metal stand. Glasses of this type are in numerous museum collections; see an example in A. Oliver Jr, Ancient Glass in the Carnegie Museum of Natural History, Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, 1980, no. 176.