Institut français
d’archéologie orientale - Le Caire

Verre byzantin et islamiqueByzantine and Islamic Glass

Maria Mossakowska-Gaubert

masquer la recherchehide search
Critères de rechercheSearch criteria
titre, auteur, périodiquetitle, author, periodic issue
identification du matériel, musée/coll.identification of the material, museum/coll.
forme, technique et technologie de prod.form, technique and prod. technology
pays, région, site; production ou consommationcountry, region, site; production or consumption
contexte archéologiquearchaelogical context
sources et questions particulièressources and specific problems
date inf.inf. date date sup.sup. date

  référencesreferences 1/6   suivantfollowing ->      retour listeback to list

ANTONARAS, Anastassios C.
Glassware in late Antique Thessalonikē (Third to Seventh Centuries C.E.)
NASRALLAH, Laura ; BAKIRTZIS, Charalambos ; FRIESEN, Steven J.
From Roman to Early Christian Thessalonikē. Studies in Religion and Archaeology
Harvard Theological Studies 64
Harvard University Press, Cambridge MA, 2010, p. 299-331

[201, 700]
• Glass objects from Thessalonikē: found almost exclusively in graves.
– Question with regard to the recycling of glass.

• Remains of the local glass working activity: 4th-6th centuries A.D. (fig. 1):
– in a building outside the eastern city walls,
– in the city’s abandoned public Forum,
– in the abandoned ruins of the Roman public bathhouse.

• Review of glass vessels:

– mid 2nd-3rd century A.D. (fig. 2) – produced both in the West and the East:
- tableware: mainly arybaloid jugs, biconical bottles;
- unguentaria: mainly pear-shaped flasks, jar-like unguentaria;
- spouted vessels: baby-feeders or lamp fillers;

– mid 3rd-4th century A.D. (fig. 3):
- tableware:
mainly pointed and flat-bottomed amforisks, large-sized jugs, spherical or pear-shaped bottles; bowls often bearing engraved or applied decoration;
produced both in the West and the East, but probably a large number of them were produced locally.
- unguentaria:
often miniature versions of tableware vessels, pear-shaped, squat or slender flasks; cubical and double-faced mold-blown;
originated in the West or even in the Balkans, a few appear to be of oriental origin.

– 4th-early 5th century A.D. (fig. 4-6) – mainly Syro-Palestinian production or imitation of Syro-Palestinian forms:
- tableware: jugs (octagonal jugs appears to be local products) and bottles; shallow and deeper bowls (some of them with mold-blown honeycomb pattern); conical beakers;
- unguentaria: mainly small amphorae, craters, and jugs, squat and spherical, pear-shaped, cylindrical, square bodied;
- lamps: handled hemispherical or calyx-shaped bowls.

– 5th-6th centuries A.D. (fig. 7-8):
- several forms of the 4th century tableware, such as jugs, bottles, and drinking vessels (stemmed beakers prevail), survieved;
- lamps: stemmed beakers of various forms, cylindrical vessels with a smaller or larger knob forming the base;
- some bowls and bottles bear engraved decorations (fig. 8):
probably mainly of Italian origin,
iconographical themas: pagan, Christian, geometrical,
some Greek isncriptions.

– Summary:
- almost exclusively free-blown, plain, undecorated vessels;
- few fully mold-blown or dip mold-blown objects;
- some examples of engraved decoration;
- small number of vessels bears applied decoration.

– Role of glass vessels in pagan and Christian burial customs.

– Question with regard to the price of glass vessels.

• Window panes:
– fragments of window panes from around the 4th century: muff-process or cylinder’s technique of production.

• Jewelry – late 3rd-6th centuries A.D. (fig. 12-13):

– Pendants:
- jars, juglets shapes, disks with stamped motifs, glass droplets.

– Beads:
- large-sized biconical or globular, dark-colored body decorated with white trails or specks; cylindrical, segmented, and patterned by the segmenting mold, gilded, or plain, spirally-ribbed pieces,
- other beads: smooth and ribbed globural, ovoid, prear-shaped, cylindrical, cubical, hexahedronlike, hexagonal, multifaceted; technics: winding, folding, molding, segmentation, drawing etc.
- eastern Mediterranean production.

– Bracelets:
- dark-colored: purple or dark green,
- section: circular, semicircular, and flat, band-like cross-section,
- technics: seamed, from drawn out canes of glass; seamless, made with the performation and centrifugal rotation of hot mass of glass,
- decoration: majority plain, few examples with pressed, geometrical motifs.

– Rings:
- glass ring gems: no decoration, lenticular, plano-convex, occasionally in the shape of pyramid.

– Enameled jewelry:
- some examples of glass enamel on golden earrings.

• Mosaics:
– examples from churches: the Rotunda, Acheiropoirtos, St. Demetrios, the Latomou monastery;
– tesserae cut on-site from large glass cakes: probably made with imported raw glass, possibly locally shaped, exception – gold-glass tesserae arrived on site either in cakes.
Grèce Greece Thessaloniki consommation production

Version 5, données dudata date 30 janvier 2013January 30th 2013