Glass saucepan with snake-thread decoration
Colorless with greenish tinge; handle in same glass; trails in yellowish opaque white and translucent cobalt blue.
Rim with inner lip, folded out and down, forming narrow collar; convex curving side to body; tubular low foot ring, made by folding; uneven bottom with pontil mark and raised central boss on interior; solid rod handle applied to upper side, with pinched flat, rounded finial.
Body decorated with two white and two blue serrated snake-thread trails, each making a similar abstract curvilinear design.
Broken and repaired with one hole in upper body below rim; pinprick bubbles; dulling, faint iridescent weathering, and one patch of brown soil encrustation on side.
The colored "snake-thread" decoration is typical of glass made at Cologne, one of the major Roman cities in the Rhineland. Originally established as a legionary fortress, the site became a Roman colony in A.D. 50 and quickly developed as an important center of trade and production, supplying not only the army but also the civilian population of the neighboring provinces.