Ribbed Glass Bowl (1–100 CE): Art, History and Details

Ribbed Glass Bowl (1–100 CE) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

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

This type of vessel represents the Roman manufacturing breakthrough of slump molding, which made high-quality glassware broadly affordable for the first time. The artisan formed ribs on a hot glass disk before the disk was placed on a convex form. The resulting bowl shape was slowly cooled and then turned on a lathe to polish the rim and apply incised detail. Finally, the bowl was fire-polished in the furnace. It is in pristine condition.

Object facts

• Title: Ribbed Glass Bowl
• Date: 1–100 CE
• Culture: Roman
• Type: Glass
• Technique: glass
• Dimensions: Diameter: 6.5 cm (2 9/16 in.)
• Collection: GR - Roman
• Department: Greek and Roman Art
• Accession number: 2009.474

A detail from the museum

Fire-polishing is a technique used to smooth the surface of a vessel by briefly melting it after shaping the glass.

Collection credit

Gift of Dr. Norman Zaworski

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.