Goblet with Grape Vine Decoration in Relief

Delicately rendered, low-relief grape vines cover most of the surface of the bowl of this large goblet referencing the wine that the vessel would have held. Fillets bind overlapping sections of the looping vine tendrils. Raised lines along with a simplified egg-and-dart at the tops and around the foot frame the main areas of decoration. The exterior glaze is light brownish green, with very little luster, while the interior of the bowl retains some localized lustrous yellow glaze. This style of cup would have had a foot, but the foot currently paired with the vessel is not ancient. Although some effort was made to duplicate the color and decorative schemes of the cup, there are enough small variations in the details of the decorative scheme, such as the different styles of egg-and-dart and the height of the relief. The color of the clay that further indicates that these two parts would not have belonged together in antiquity.

The form and decoration of lead-glazed, mold-made vessels of the late Hellenistic to early Roman period may have been influenced by vessels made of metal, glass, and other ceramic relief wares. Sometimes linked to a type of ceramic vessel named in the Roman period “Rhosian ware” (rhosica vasa), the lead-glazed pottery vessels were made mostly in Tarsos, on the southeastern coast of Turkey, and elsewhere in Asia Minor, with the technology spreading to workshops in the Italian peninsula as well.

Provenance

Provenance (from the French provenir, 'to come from/forth') is the chronology of the ownership, custody, or location of a historical object.

Dikran Kelekian, Paris and New York [1]; purchased by Henry Walters, Baltimore, 1914; by bequest to Walters Art Museum, 1931.

[1] as "from Boscoreale"