Toilet bottle with conical body

Intact toilet bottle with slightly elongated, conical body (form Isings f. 28 a; in Roman Glass from Dated Finds, Groningen-Djakarta 1957) on a flat base; traces of a thin weathering patina in the interior. The glass used is transparent and colourless, with blue-greenish hues; technique employed: blowing.

It shows a cylindrical neck (h. 7.5 cm) with a choke at its base and straight wall tapered upwards; the neck’s height is inferior to that of the body and it has a funnel shape with cut and rounded rim. Such type of toilet bottle may also reach a considerable height, up to 19 cm, thus taking the resemblance of a bottle without handles.

The earliest examples of the form Isings f. 28 appear in two funerary stores of 40-60 AD, yet some fragments found in Magdalensberg date to the Augustan age (if not to the last quarter of the I century BC) and thus belong to a previous production of blown glass which continued also in the first half of the I century AD until the early Flavian age. This type is very frequently found in the western provinces of the Roman Empire as it represented a very common form.