Glass hunt-and-scroll bottle

Glass hunt-and-scroll bottle

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Probably colorless; handle of uncertain color. Everted fine rim, folded over and in; short cylindrical neck, splayed at base and merging with piriform body; flat bottom; handle trailed over rim and top of neck and drawn downwards; continuous mold seam runs from neck, down side, and across bottom, with two distinct vertical creases in relief on neck. On body, decoration in relief in three registers, separated by two horizontal rows of knobs: at top, large dog (or lion) with long tail, facing right, crouching on forepaws on one side of mold and a deer standing facing right with head erect on the other side, flanked by a slender tree to left and an indistinct object to right; center, two wavy tendril scrolls with berries divided by a vertical palmettes across mold seam on one side; bottom, twenty-one upturned flutes, two of which overlap at junction of mold. Broken and repaired, most of handle missing and some fill in side of body; many pinprick bubbles; deep pitting and brilliant iridescent weathering.

Greek and Roman Art

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Glass hunt-and-scroll bottleGlass hunt-and-scroll bottleGlass hunt-and-scroll bottleGlass hunt-and-scroll bottleGlass hunt-and-scroll bottle

The Museum's collection of Greek and Roman art comprises more than thirty thousand works ranging in date from the Neolithic period (ca. 4500 B.C.) to the time of the Roman emperor Constantine's conversion to Christianity in A.D. 312. It includes the art of many cultures and is among the most comprehensive in North America. The geographic regions represented are Greece and Italy, but not as delimited by modern political frontiers: Greek colonies were established around the Mediterranean basin and on the shores of the Black Sea, and Cyprus became increasingly Hellenized. For Roman art, the geographical limits coincide with the expansion of the Roman Empire. The department also exhibits the art of prehistoric Greece (Helladic, Cycladic, and Minoan) and pre-Roman art of Italic peoples, notably the Etruscans.