Glass bowl in the form of a shell

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Colorless with pale green tinge. Flaring, knocked-off rim with shallow S-shaped collar below; body with circular circumference and rounded bottom. Body formed into the shape of a marine bivalve mollusc (scallop) in relief with eleven ribs radiating from a deep ocellus or umbone in a fan pattern ; ribs become broader and have rounded ends below collar around rim; the ocellus is flanked to either side by a hemispherical bulge. Below the rim is a faint wheel-abraded line. Broken and repaired, with some internal cracks; pinprick and larger bubbles; faint weathering and iridescence. Bowls made in in silver, bronze, and semiprecious stone and shaped to resemble a large seashell became popular in the Hellenistic period. Glass examples were also produced in early Roman imperial times, some cast and others mold-blown. This bowl belongs to a group found mainly on the Rhine and Danube frontiers that is dated to the fourth century A.D.

Greek and Roman Art

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

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.

Metropolitan Museum of Art