Bottle with cylindrical body

Bottle with cylindrical elongated body (form Isings f.51b) made of colourless transparent glass which has: outsplayed, folded and flattened rim; short and thin cylindrical neck devoid of handles; concave base with no foot. It is of good quality and it shows careful workmanship. The technique used is that of blowing into an open mould: the glob of molten glass was blown into a mould (made of either wood, clay or stone) in order to obtain a vitreous body with either a cylindrical shape, like in our case, or a cubic one; free-blown, that is inflated through a blowpipe, were instead the neck and the shoulder over which the separately made handle was attached. Larger vessels had the body decorated with rows of lathe-cut lines. Although cylindrical bottles appear to be less common than those with a square section, their comp

act shape makes them all the same apt for being used both as transport containers for oil or wine and as tableware or storage vessels.

Cylindrical bottles form part of the glassware that appeared probably around the middle of the I century AD, but it is in the late I and early II century AD that this form becomes most common, thanks to the technique of blowing into moulds of simple shapes that initiated the process of vessels’ standardization and mass production. The spread of the form here at issue continued for the whole of the II century AD. As far as production areas are concerned, these are supposedly to be found in Italy and in the western Mediterranean, considering that these objects were very widespread.