Bowl with Beaded Rim (300–500 CE): Art, History and Details

Bowl with Beaded Rim (300–500 CE) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

This bowl was probably intended for use in a private home, perhaps a fashionable villa on the Mediterranean coast. Wealthy Romans stored a variety of silver vessels and implements for entertaining and enjoyed using them while eating and drinking at social events. This bowl is decorated with a beaded rim, a feature often found on domestic silver bowls of this period. The basic shape was formed first by hammering. Then the bowl was polished and chased while it turned on a lathe. The beaded decoration was achieved by hammering the silver into a mold.

Object facts

• Title: Bowl with Beaded Rim
• Date: 300–500 CE
• Culture: Byzantium, Syria(?), Byzantine period
• Type: Metalwork
• Technique: silver
• Dimensions: Overall: 10.4 x 27.8 x 10.5 cm (4 1/8 x 10 15/16 x 4 1/8 in.)
• Collection: MED - Byzantine
• Department: Medieval Art
• Accession number: 1954.259

Collection credit

Purchase from the J. H. Wade Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• The Cleveland Museum of Art. The Cleveland Museum of Art Handbook. Cleveland, OH: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1958.
• Milliken, William. "Early Byzantine Silver." The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 45, no. 3 (March 1958): 35-40.
• The Cleveland Museum of Art. Handbook of the Cleveland Museum of Art/1966. Cleveland, OH: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1966.

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.