Lot 252. A Roman two-handled blue-green glass amphora signed by Ennion, circa first half of the 1st century A.D. Estimate £400,000 – £600,000 ($532,000 - $798,000). Photo Christie's Image Ltd 2016

Blown in a four-part mould, three vertical sections for the neck and upper body and one for the lower body and base, the body with three registers, the first on shoulder and upper body with a continuous floral spray forming six circular frames filled with downturned palmettes with outward-curving leaves, alternating with six downturned palmettes with inward-curving leaves, around the middle of the body a frieze of net pattern, the tabula ansata with two-lined Greek inscription reading ENNIWN/EΠOIEI, "Ennion made it", on one side, the lower body with a frieze of vertical tongues, the cylindrical neck with vertical tongues, rounded at both ends, a narrow flat inward-folded rim, and two rod handles attached to shoulder, drawn up and turned in and down and attached on the neck under rim, the underside of the base with central indented knob; 6 7/8 in. (17.5 cm.) high

Provenance: Acquired prior to 1996.

Exhibited: The Israel Museum, Jerusalem, Made by Ennion: Ancient Glass Treasures from the Shlomo Moussaieff Collection, May-December 2011.
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Ennion: Master of Roman Glass, 9 December 2014-13 April 2015.

PUBLISHED: D. P. Barag, 'Phoenicia and Mould-Blowing in the Early Roman Period', Annales du 13e Congrès de l'Association Internationale pour l'Histoire de Verre, Pays Bas, 28 août-1 septembre 1995, p. 79, fig. 1. 
Y. Israeli, Made by Ennion: Ancient Glass Treasures from the Shlomo Moussaieff Collection, exhibition cat. (Israel Museum), Jerusalem, 2011, p. 16.
C. S. Lightfoot, Ennion: Master of Roman Glass, exhibition cat. (Metropolitan Museum of Art), New York, 2014, p. 72.

Notes: Unusually, this amphora was blown into the same mould as the one-handled Ennion jug in this sale (lot 50). It has been suggested that this might be because something happened to the three-part foot mould which would have originally been used for this shape, so that for this amphora, a separate flat section with a central peg was used to hold all the other mould pieces together, which would explain the depression in the centre of the base (pers. comm. The Roman Glassmakers, Andover). This feature can also be seen on the only other flat bottomed vessel from the same mould, a brown glass jug with a single opaque white handle. This jug was acquired in Istanbul before 1895 and was formerly in the collections of Julien Greau and Pierpont Morgan before entering the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (inv. no. 1917.194.226; Lightfoot, 2014, pp. 70-1, no. 1). The only other two-handled amphora with a flat bottom signed by Ennion is a brown example from Kerch (ancient Panticapaeum), on the Black Sea, which is now in the Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg (inv. no. 1852.54; Kunina, 1997, p. 273, no. 109; Lightfoot, 2014, pp. 74-5, no. 3). This amphora, however, was blown into a different mould to the present lot. In addition to the tongues on the neck and the lower body found on the present lot, the Hermitage example is decorated with unconnected palmettes and stylised acanthus leaves below a row of ‘beads’ and honeycomb frieze made up of hexagons, into which the tabula ansata bearing Ennion’s signature is inserted, while the underside of the base has three concentric circles, as typically found on the underside of many other mould-blown vessels. 

Christie's. ANCIENT GLASS FROM THE SHLOMO MOUSSAIEFF COLLECTION, 6 July 2016, London, King Street