“large things, as well as small, [were made] of white and coloured glass that seem to be woven of osier twigs, equally spaced with the greatest uniformity and exactness of termination”
Vanoccio Biringuccio in ‘De la Pirotechnia’, published in Venice in 1540.
The main body of the glass is made of alternating Vetro a fili (glass with threads) and Vetro a retorti (glass with twists) canes, blow-moulded with pyramidal ridges or umbones along eight horizontal bands. The shape is referred to as an Umbo form – meaning knob or projection, a term more often used in reference to an umbo shield.
Ex. Lanna Collection, Bayerisches Nationalmuseum
Dr Rainer Rückert dated the example in the Lanna Collection, now in the Bayerisches Nationalmuseum, to the second half of the 16th century noting that its silver gilt mount to the foot is probably dateable to that period.[i]
Our vase would have originally been produced with a lid, but there is only one example that we are aware of which still has one, the example in the Corning Museum of Glass. It is likely to have been made as a pharmaceutical container.
Corning Museum of Glass
The Umbo vase in the Getty Museum did also have a lid when it was acquired at Christie’s in 1977 from the Malcolm of Poltalloch collection by Christopher Sheppard, but it has gone missing. There was another with a cover in the Schlossmuseum in Berlin that was destroyed in the Second World War. Hess and Husband (1997) list another three vases of similar form but made with different techniques in their description of the vase in the J. Paul Getty Museum. The Getty vase is attributed to 1580-1600 Italy (probably Murano), but Hess and Husband suggest that the other examples of this form may have been made in other glasshouses as there is a significant variation in the design and quality of the glass.
The Getty vase when it was sold at Christies in 1977 & now
For a pair of ewers of a similar form adapted with a handle see the British Museum.
(British museum Inv. no. 1869,0624.44) https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/search?keyword=1869%2C0624.44
Condition:
Good
Provenance:
The Collection of Pieter C. Ritsema van Eck (Wouter), (1938-2024), former glass curator of the Rijksmuseum Amsterdam (1988-2003)
References:
Hess and Husband 1997
Catherine Hess and Timothy Husband, European Glass in the J. Paul Getty Museum, 1997
Rückert 1982
Rainer Rückert, Die Glassammlung des Bayerischen Nationalmuseums München, Hirmer, München, 1982, Vol. I
Christies 1977
Christies London, A fine collection of Façon de Venice Glass, February 1977, lot 241
Lanna 1909
Sale Catalogue: Sammlung des Freihernn Adalbert von Lanna, Vol. 2. 21 – (Rudolph Lepke, Berlin, 28 March 1911), lot 809, Tafel 61
Price: £28,000
[i] Rückert 1982 no. 89, p. 66, Illustrated pl. 22.