Glass perfume bottle
Until the 4th c. BC, the glass used to make vases and ornaments was opaque and coloured (colouring was achieved with the addition of metal oxides). Transparent glass started being use in the 4th c. BC and became common much later.
Colourful perfume bottles like this one were made with the ‘core-forming technique’. The technique was used since the Late Bronze Age and allowed artisans to combine glasses of various colours. It was a very demanding technique, executed by experienced glass-makers in temperatures over 1000ο C (see video for the core-forming technique).
In the Aegean, glass vessels appeared in the Late Bronze Age, but were few in number and most likely imported. Local production seems to have started in the Archaic period. The vessels produced were small in size and imitated pottery shapes such as the amphora, aryballos, alabastron, oinochoe etc. Most of them were used as perfume containers. The island of Rhodes was a major glass-working center.
PUBLICATION
Eleftheratou S. 2006. Cat. no. 112, in Choremi-Spetsieri Α. – Zarkadas Α. (eds), The Paul and Alexandra Canellopoulos Museum. Ancient Art, Athens, 188.
