A Roman blue-green glass flask with internal threads
Circa 5th-6th Century A.D.
19.8cm high
Footnotes:
Provenance:
The Alfred Wolkenberg (d. 1990) collection, New York.
The Alfred Wolkenberg Collection of Ancient Glass, Christie's, London, 9 July 1991, lot 50.
Anonymous sale; Christie's, London, 14-15 May 2002, lot 527.
The Nico F. Bijnsdorp Collection (NFB 120), acquired from the above sale.

This lot is a remarkable survival. At first glance this is a typical late Roman flask with a bulbous body and tall cylindrical neck decorated with applied trailing. However, in addition, there are four internal delicate hollow spikes or trails of glass that extend from the lower body to the shoulders that are still intact. Their function remains a mystery but certainly serve as a vehicle to display the skill of the master glassmaker who would have jabbed the initial bubble of glass with a sharp instrument before inflating it to create these hollow taught threads. For a long-necked flask with a spherical body containing five threads in the Bomford Collection and a smaller flask with eight internal threads but without the decorative trailing on the neck in the British Museum see N. Thomas, Ancient Glass. The Bomford Collection of Pre-Roman & Roman Glass on loan to the City of Bristol Museum & Art Gallery, Bristol, 1976, p. 34, no.159 and D.Harden et al., Masterpieces of Glass, British Museum, London, 1968, p. 90, no. 125. For further examples of flasks with internal threads see The Toledo Museum of Art, Ohio, obj. nos. 1923.534 and 1923.1239 as well as E. M. Stern, Roman, Byzantine, and Early Medieval Glass from the Ernesto Wolf Collection, Ostfildern, 2001, p.302, no. 165.
This lot is subject to the following lot symbols: *
* VAT on imported items at a preferential rate of 5% on Hammer Price and the prevailing rate on Buyer's Premium.

The flask appears to be intact with no visible signs of repair or restoration.

There are losses to the dark blue spiralled thread decoration which wrap around the neck of the flask, as visible in the catalogue illustration. There is a minor loss to the pinched decoration around the shoulder of the bottle. With a burst air bubble underneath one of the thread dimples.

With overall surface ware including pitting and scratching with patches of iridescence. With patches of a warm brown encrustation and some weathering.

A Bijnsdorp collection sticker numbered '120' affixed to the underside.