LOT 0150

Large Graeco-Roman Silver Wine Infundibulum

5TH CENTURY B.C.-1ST CENTURY A.D.

11 5/8 in. (356 grams, 29.5 cm).

With a hollow spherical body decorated with slightly concave petals radiating from each end, separated by a central grooved band; one end with a tapering funnel marked by horizontal grooves, the other with a short tapering neck and a wide rim.

Old Austrian private collection, 1980s.

Accompanied by a copy of a nine-page examination report number 154/2026 by Dr habil Mikhail Treister.
Accompanied by an academic report by Dr Raffaele D’Amato.
This lot has been checked against the Interpol Database of stolen works of art and is accompanied by search certificate number no.12905-242699.

Cf. for the general discussion on wine and metallic kitchen vessels Treister, M.Y., ‘Rare fifth-century BC bronze vessels and instruments, associated with wine drinking, from the Volna 1 necropolis on the Taman Peninsula’ in Vestnik Drevnei Istorii, vol.84, no.3, 2024, pp.640-663; for a metal example of Roman infundibulum see Daremberg-Saglio, Dictionnaire des Antiquités Grecques et Romaines, Paris, 1873-1917, p.516, fig.4064.

Comparable instruments, usually called clepsydra in Greek and infundibulum in Latin, were in use in the 5th – first half of the 4th centuries B.C. A total of 13 such objects, or clepsydra, are known, including two of the unknown origin), represented by the finds both from Central (Lazio) and South (Campania, Calabria and Basilicata) Italy, Illyria (Apollonia) and Central Greece (Boeotia, Phocis) (all made of bronze), from the Taman peninsula in the North Pontic area, a fragmented one – from the Ulyap kurgan necropolis in the Trans-Kuban region and a silver piece from an aristocratic Thracian burial in the Plovdiv region. A distinctive feature of all these metal objects is the combination of a narrow vertical tube, at the lower end turning into a container with holes in the bottom.