Beaker with Applied Decoration

Object Name: 
Beaker with Applied Decoration

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Object Name: 
Beaker with Applied Decoration
Place Made: 
Accession Number: 
2009.3.49
Dimensions: 
Overall H: 10.1 cm, Diam (max): 8.2 cm
Location: 
On Display
Date: 
1275-1325
Web Description: 
This beaker is decorated with eight continuous horizontal trails. Four deep blue trails alternate with four almost colorless trails, three of which were pinched to form bands of narrow vertical ridges, while the fourth, at the junction of the wall and the base, has a series of fire-polished “toes.” Vessels of almost colorless glass decorated with deep blue trails were made in several parts of western and southern Europe in the later Middle Ages. Beakers with this type of ornament, however, are rare. Similar objects are in the collections of the Museum für Kunsthandwerk in Frankfurt am Main and the Museum Kunst Palast in Düsseldorf, both in Germany. Fragments of another beaker of this type were found in a late 13thcentury context during archaeological excavations at Breisach in Baden-Württemberg, Germany, in 1980. The similar beakers noted above are published in Erwin Baumgartner and Ingeborg Krueger, Phönix aus Sand und Asche: Glas des Mittelalters, Munich: Klinkhardt & Biermann, 1988, pp. 182– 183, nos. 149–151.
Department: 
Provenance: 
Blok, W. Bastiaan, Source
Category: 
Primary Description: 
Almost colorless glass with almost colorless and transparent deep blue trails; blown, applied. Beaker: roughly cylindrical. Rim plain, with rounded lip; mouth shaped like funnel, but slightly distorted; wall tapers, then is straight and descends almost vertically; base plain, with slight kick; irregular pontil mark (1.6x1.2 cm). Applied decoration consists of four blue trails alternating with four colorless trails, all of which are horizontal (from top to bottom): (1) at junction of mouth and wall, one continuous narrow blue trail, with small blob at point of attachment; (2) one continuous colorless trail, with blob at point of attachment; trail was flattened, then pinched into 13 vertical protrusions; (3) as (1), but not perfectly horizontal and with ends of trail overlapping and larger blob; (4) as (2), but with larger blob and 15 pinched protrusions; (5) as (1), but with virtually no blob; (6) as (2), but with 14 protrusions; (7) as (1), but with virtually no blob and trail wound twice around about half of circumference; (8) as (2) wound around junction of wall and base, and with 17 rounded protrusions that point slightly downward.
Medieval Art and Ecology (working title)
Venue(s)
Pulitzer Arts Foundation 2023-03-10 through 2023-08-09
The Pulitzer Arts Foundation is planning an exhibition focused on medieval art and its relationship to the environment. Medieval Art and Ecology (working title) will run from March 10 through August 9, 2023. Bringing together approximately forty objects produced between 1100-1500 CE, the show will highlight the transformative impacts that art-making had on the environment, as well as medieval people's interactions with and attitudes toward their natural surroundings. As a period that experienced profound cultural transformation due in part to environmental crises like famine, plague, climate change, and deforestation, the Middle Ages stands as a particularly rich era for exploring this subject matter. While Medieval Art and Ecology builds off of decades of scholarship that interrogates how artists derived inspiration from plants, animals, and natural phenomena, the exhibition will be the first of its kind. It will engage emerging fields of study such as ecocritical art history, which seeks to position artworks within the particular ecological conditions that engendered their creation. By bringing together a broad range of materials including stone, metal, wood, ivory, cloth, and parchment, we will demonstrate how activities like quarrying, mining, forestry, and animal husbandry left both temporary and permanent marks on medieval landscapes. To do so, we will pair sculptures, paintings, and textiles with contemporaneous manuscript illuminations that depict laborers extracting raw materials from the earth and artists refining them into works of art. While the objects included in the exhibition were made in Europe, many of them incorporate substances sourced on other continents, demonstrating how the demand for particular art­making materials affected landscapes around the far-flung reaches of the medieval globe. The artworks will also illustrate how people negotiated their relationships to the environment at large, blending classical, medieval, and religious knowledge with lived experiences and personal observations. From iconographic inspiration derived from the natural world to the incorporation of materials whose symbolism is deeply linked to fire, water, sky, and earth, these objects reveal the sophisticated and nuanced approaches medieval artists and patrons took toward their surroundings. Ultimately, the exhibition will shed new light on the multilayered ways in which medieval art is linked to the environment, and will prompt new considerations of the long history of human modifications to the earth in the service of cultural production. Medieval Art and Ecology is organized by Curatorial Associate Heather Alexis Smith. In keeping with the exhibition's themes, Smith is making a conscious effort to reduce the carbon footprint of the show by securing loans from United States-based collections that are largely located in the Midwest and along the northeastern seaboard.
Venue(s)
Corning Museum of Glass
Changing Exhibitions Gallery
 
Jurors' Choice (2016) illustrated, p. 91; BIB# AI101515
Jurors' Choice (New Glass Review 32) (2011) illustrated, p. 85, bottom; BIB# AI95693
The Corning Museum of Glass: Notable Acquisitions 2009 (2010) illustrated, p. 10, #2; BIB# AI79879
Medieval Glass for Popes, Princes, and Peasants (2010) illustrated, p. 138, #35; BIB# 115588
The Corning Museum of Glass Annual Report 2009 (2010) illustrated, p. 5; BIB# AI86944