Cleveland Museum of Art

Ribbed Glass Bowl

Date

1–100 CE

Medium

glass

Culture

Roman

Department

Greek and Roman Art

Institution

Cleveland Museum of Art

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

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