Fragment of an Inlay in the Shape of a Broad Collar
Roman Period, 1st century BCE–1st century CE
Ancient Egyptian
Glass; 3 × 2.9 × 0.5 cm (1 1/8 × 1 1/8 × 3/16 in.)
The Art Institute of Chicago, gift of Theodore W. and Frances S. Robinson, 1949.1300
This fragment of a flat, semicircular-shaped inlay is composed of wide, flat bands of blue and turquoise glass divided by narrower lines of yellow. The outer edge is decorated with two bands of flowers. The inner band displays a repeating pattern of red-and-light blue flowers with four petals and a yellow center, followed by four green flowers with yellow midribs, red stems, and delicate yellow stamens. The outer band is composed of a series of floral rosettes with opaque, white petals around a yellow center with a red dot. An orange border separates the rows of flowers and trims the outer edge of the front of the inlay.1
This inlay was made in an open mold. The wide bands of blue and turquoise and narrower strips of yellow were cut from flat pieces of glass that were fused edge to edge. The flat pieces were fused to a backing of reddish-brown glass (see fig. 1) that gave the inlay stability.[1] The same reddish-brown glass was used to reinforce the outer edge of the inlay. The irregular orange band on the reverse indicates that the orange glass melted at a lower temperature than the other colors and “oozed” out into the adjacent flower bands. When complete, the front was polished smooth.2
Fig. 1
Back of cat. 97.
This inlay represents a broad collar. Other examples of this type of inlay are composed of more complex, concentric, floral-pattern designs, more closely replicating a real broad collar that was composed of flowers or beads of different colors.[2] In a glass inlay of a king in the Brooklyn Museum, the collar is composed of fan-shaped cells with dividing lines edged with a border, not unlike the Chicago fragment.[3]3
This inlay was purchased from the Cairo dealer Nicolas Tano, whose label, with the inventory number 3186, still adheres to the back.
4
Provenance
Nicolas Tano, Cairo; Theodore W. and Frances S. Robinson, Chicago, by 1931; given to the Art Institute of Chicago, 1949.5
Publication History
Roberta Casagrande-Kim, ed., When the Greeks Ruled Egypt: From Alexander the Great to Cleopatra, with contributions by Mary C. Greuel et al., exh. cat. (New York: Institute for the Study of the Ancient World, 2014), cover illustration, 106, no. 139 (object shown upside down).
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- For other inlays that incorporate a reddish glass backing, see Robert S. Bianchi and Birgit Schlick-Nolte, “Catalogue of Ancient Egyptian Glass Objects,” in Reflections on Ancient Glass from the Borowski Collection, ed. Robert S. Bianchi, exh. cat. (Mainz: Philipp von Zabern, 2002), 137–38, EG-20, EG-21. Both date to the Late Period–Ptolemaic Period.
- Examples of this type of inlay include: collar-shaped inlay of mosaic glass (Mahboubian Gallery; published in A Rare Collection of Fifty-Two Glass Inlay Elements: Egypt, Mainly 4th–3rd Century BC [London: Mahboubian Gallery, n.d.], pls. 1–5); collar-shaped inlay (Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 26.7.1232); inlay in the form of a collar (Corning Museum of Glass, Corning, New York, 94.1.1). I thank Ashley Arico, Associate Curator of Ancient Egyptian Art, for the last two references.
- Inlay Figure of a King in Four Pieces (Brooklyn Museum, 49.61.1–4; published in Richard A. Fazzini and Robert S. Bianchi, eds., Cleopatra’s Egypt: Age of the Ptolemies, exh. cat. [Brooklyn, NY: Brooklyn Museum, 1988], 108, pl. I).
Emily Teeter, “Cat. 97 Fragment of an Inlay in the Shape of a Broad Collar,” in Ancient Egyptian Art at the Art Institute of Chicago by Emily Teeter and Ashley F. Arico, ed. Ashley F. Arico (Art Institute of Chicago, 2025), https://doi.org/10.53269/9780865593213/99.
© 2025 by The Art Institute of Chicago. This work is licensed under a CC BY-NC 4.0 license: creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/.
