CIRCA 1ST CENTURY B.C.-1ST CENTURY A.D.

Details

A ROMAN SILVER BOWL
Circa 1st Century B.C.-1st Century A.D.
The shallow bowl lathe-turned, on a disk foot, the underside centered by a dotted ring, the rim slightly splayed and finished with a beaded edge and a band of lesbian kymation, with two separately-cast and slightly up-turned crescentic handles with some openwork, decorated by acanthus-scroll and foliate ornament in relief, and a duck head at each end, the underside with bifurcated supports each with a leaf-shaped terminal
10 1/8 in. (25.7 cm) wide

Provenance

Acquired by the current owner in 1955 and said to have been found along the banks of the De Bylandt, a tributary of the Rhine along the border between the Netherlands and Germany.

Lot Essay

The ornamental details of the bowl find parallels on Roman silver from the 1st century B.C. and 1st century A.D. Compare the beaded border and band of kymation on the vessels of the "Tivoli Hoard," thought to be Republican in date, now in the Field Museum in Chicago and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York (see, for example, the lanx in Chicago, no. 74 in Hill, Greek and Roman Metalware). For the form of the handles compare the vessels from the House of Menander, Pompeii, nos. 313 and 314 in Ward-Perkins and Claridge, Pompeii AD 79.

The results of metallurgical analysis performed on this piece are consistent for Roman silver of this period.

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