Barrel-shaped glass bottle, with maker’s mark, Amiens Alison E. Cooley AEC/ASHL AN1948.36.xml Oxford Ashmolean Museum AN1948.36 AshLI 424

A single-handled cylindrical bottle of greenish-blue glass, decorated with horizontal ribs at top and bottom, produced from a mould. The bottle is intact.

Overall: 0.17 diameter at top, 0.041; base diameter 0.08

The base is marked with the manufacturer’s name.

 Letters on base: h., 0.012 Amiens AD c.200-300 (Whitehouse 2001: p.96) The bottle is reported to have been found in Amiens in 1885. It was bought from Arthur Churchill Ltd, together with 1948.37, having previously been part of the collection of Sir John Evans (Accessions Register; Newby 2000: p.20). It is currently on display in the Rome Gallery. Photograph Photograph: base. Photograph: top. Photograph with 1948.37
ex officina Frontiniana

From the workshop of Frontinus’

This type of glass bottle, thought to imitate a wooden barrel in shape, is found elsewhere in the empire, marked with the manufacturer’s name Frontinus (for example, Whitehouse 2001: p.96 no.589). They would have been used for transporting and storing oil, wine, and other liquids (Newby 2000: p.20). Similar bottles have been found elsewhere in northern France, England, Belgium, the Netherlands, Switzerland, and in the Rhineland (Whitehouse 2001: p.97; distribution map in Chassaing 1961: p.29, Fig.9). This example is not listed in the catalogue of Chassaing 1961: pp.30-33.

Ashmolean Museum Department of Antiquities MS. Accession Register 1948.36; Newby (2000) p.20 no.13

Chassaing M. 1961 Les barillets frontiniens Revue archéologique de l’est et du centre-est 12 7-33 Newby M.S. 2000 Glass of Four Millennia Oxford Ashmolean Museum Whitehouse D. 2001 Roman Glass in the Corning Museum of Glass 2 Corning, New York The Corning Museum of Glass