About the lot N° 11
Title : A rare Egyptian rod-formed glass palm column kohl vessel
Provenance : Provenance:
Property from a deceased Dutch estate, purchased in Egypt while travelling in the 1930s.
With Veilinggebouw De Zwaan, Amsterdam.
Acquired from the above June 2001.
Published:
C.A.R. Andrews and J. van Dijk (eds),
Objects for Eternity: Egyptian Antiquities from the W. Arnold Meijer Collection, Mainz, 2006, pp.116–118, 256, no.2.26.
H-P. Meyer,
Microanalysis, Egyptian New Kingdom Glass, Objects from the W. Arnold Meijer Collection, Universität Heidelberg, Institut für Geowissenschaften, 2020, pp.40–65.
Exhibited:
APM, Archaeological Museum of the University of Amsterdam, Objecten voor de Eeuwigheid, November 2006 – March 2007.
Reiss Engelhorn Museen Mannheim, Zart und Rau - Glaskollektionen, November 2015 – May 2016.
This finely preserved vessel, rarely found on the market, would have been made by shaping the molten glass around a cylindrical working rod covered by a pale brownish parting layer. A considerable part of this layer still adheres to the interior of the tube. The outwardly sloping palm fronds were worked from the glass of the body and the edges were separated and rounded by indenting and tooling.
In Birgit Nolte's extensive 1968 study of ancient Egyptian glass, she listed 57 palm column flasks, nearly all of which are in museum collections (Birgit Nolte, 1968,
Die Glasgefässe im alten Ägypten, Münchner Ägyptologische Studien 14). They range in height from 7cm to 11.2cm, the lobed tops mainly decorated with vertical trails overlain by spiral yellow or white trails or a combination of both on top; below, the wide band of spiral trailing was combed into a pattern of festoons or a feather design, as with this example. The closest parallels to this example include one now in the Toledo Museum of Art that was formerly in the collections of Count Grégoire Stroganoff and Giorgio Sangiorgi, Rome, that was attributed by Nolte to workshops operating from the reign of Amenhotep III to Rameses II (circa 1400 to 1250 BC; opcit 1968, pp.39 and 140-1, 149; David F. Gose,
The Toledo Museum of Art. Early Ancient Glass, New York, pp.62, no.11), and another in The Corning Museum of Glass, which has tight feathered trailing along the entire length of the body (Sidney M. Goldstein, 1979,
Pre-Roman and Early Roman Glass in The Corning Museum of Glass, Corning, pp.59-60, no.24, col.pl.5) and
Egypt's Golden Age: The Art of Living in the New Kingdom 1558-1085 B.C., Boston, 1982, p.166, nos.182 and 183, and The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, inv.no.91.1.1351. See also a glass fragment with similar fine feather decoration, excavated at Lischt and dated to the 19th Dynasty, which is in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, acc.no.11.151.361.Notes : This lot is subject to the following lot symbols: *
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Sale title : Antiquities
Sale date : 07 Jul 2022
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Sale Reference : Live Sale
