Roman Glass Jug

This clear, light-green blown glass pitcher has a single green tubular thread handle with a thumb-rest at the rim; the decoration is completed with fine dark-blue thin threading around the neck.
Glass making technique in antiquity originated in the second millennium B. C. in Egypt and Mesopotamia and progressed from core-molding to mold-pressing and glass-cutting, subsequently to free-blowing and mold-blowing. With a versatility like no other known material in Roman times, abundant availability, lightness and ease of use, glass enabled the imitation of a wide range of other materials (especially precious metals or stones), whether in the form, the design or the color. Furthermore, the ancients certainly knew that glass is a chemically neutral substance, what makes it particularly suitable for the storage of food, but also of cosmetics or pharmaceutical products.

Complete; surface cleaned with minor remains of deposits.

Ex- US private collection, acquired in New York, 1998.

Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, 2 June-6 October 2002.

On late Roman glass with trailed ornament, see:
AUTH S. H., Ancient Glass at the Newark Museum from the Eugene Schaefer Collection of Antiquities, Newark, 1976, pp. 148-149, no. 191-193.
WHITEHOUSE D., Roman Glass in the Corning Museum of Glass, vol. 2, New York, 1997, p. 147, no. 661; p. 149-150, no. 667; pp. 155-156, no. 673.