Toilet bottle with a pear-shaped body (Ampolla)

Intact toilet bottle with pear-shaped body (form Isings f.28 a, in Roman Glass from Dated Finds, Groningen-Djakarta 1957) made of colourless transparent glass with yellow-brown hues. It has a short cylindrical neck, inferior in height to the body, tapered upwards and decorated by some applied trails; it has the neck cut and slightly bent outwards with a rounded edge; the profile is continuous without a choke at the base, the bottom is flat. The technique used is that of the free-hand blowing, as clearly shown by the asymmetrical shape of the object.

The type, widely attested in the whole of Italy from 10-30 AD, was only made of monochrome glass, often coloured; such characteristic reflects the earlier production of blown glass, when coloured glass was mainly employed, as opposed to natural glass whose use started to spread from the second half of the I century AD. A standardized production will appear in the period going from the late Augustan age to early Flavian times.