I have not created any entries on this blog since August 2020, and with good reason. Nearly two years ago, I quietly terminated my antiquities business, Clio Ancient Art, bringing to an end twelve satisfying and enjoyable years of involvement in the trade. I’ve since permanently shut down Clio’s pages on various online selling platforms.… Read More Archiving This Blog
Summer is typically the season for excavations worldwide. This year, of course, is somewhat different. But that hasn’t stopped researchers examining evidence from excavations both old and recent. Below, in chronological order starting with the oldest, are links to articles I’ve found particularly revealing from the past couple of months. All links open in a… Read More Archaeology and ancient art news from the past few months.
As many of our regular readers know, I started a “sister blog” a few months ago, dealing with my exploration of the intersection of art from the past and art from the present, and specifically how this impacts my own work as an artist. As so much of my work is impacted by art from… Read More Articles of interest from our sister blog
In January of this year I wrote a brief article for this Blog dealing with my own experiences as both a dealer in ancient Mediterranean art and an artist myself, and the influence one has upon the other. The article was inspired by an exhibition that was a collaboration between the British Museum and Turner… Read More A Confluence of Art, Ancient and Modern
This week’s featured antiquity is a remarkable late Roman glass pendant in the shape of a vase or juglet. It belongs to a class of decorative pendants and related objects that first appear in the Eastern Mediterranean in the mid-Third Century AD and evolve into a variety of types and forms into the Fifth Century… Read More Object of the Week: A Roman Glass Juglet Pendant
This week’s featured object is a lovely marbled glass bottle sometimes referred to as an unguentarium, from “unguent” meaning a salve or ointment, though in the Roman world this would most commonly have been a scented oil either for personal use or for funerary rites. Reassembled from a few large fragments, like most of its… Read More Clio’s Object of the Week: A Rare Roman Glass Marbled Unguentarium, Early 1st Century AD
Two news items appeared in the popular press during the second half of September, 2016 that addressed recent discoveries of possible East Asian migrants in a Roman period cemetery in London and Late Roman coins found in excavations of a Medieval castle on the Japanese island of Okinawa. While some aspects of the initial excavation… Read More Distant Connections: Contact and Object Exchange Between Mediterranean and Far East Asian Civilizations in the First Few Centuries CE
Our featured item of the week is a large and impressive example of a Late Roman to Early Byzantine barrel shaped glass bead, appearing black, decorated in both red and yellow trails. A set of four double trails of applied red divide the bead into a series of registers, each with a thick zig-zag trail… Read More A Large Late Roman Trail Decorated Barrel Shaped Glass Bead 4th-5th Century AD
This week we have selected a superb silver and glass buckle from Late Antiquity. This object was made at the moment in history when the Western European provinces of the Roman Empire were slipping further from centralised authority and becoming the de facto semi-barbarian kingdoms of the Franks, Visigoths, Saxons and others. Our object dates… Read More Our Object the the Week: A Merovingian Frankish Silver and Glass Buckle, Late 5th – 6th Century AD
Our object of the week is an intact Roman glass toilet bottle, usually called an unguentarium. This name seems to be a 19th Century invention, based on the ancient Roman term “unguentarius,” a word used to describe sellers of perfumes. This type of glass vessel is believed to have been used for dispensing perfumed oils… Read More Object of the Week: A Roman Glass Unguentarium
Clio Ancient Art & Antiquities 
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