A beautiful golden orb is the resevoir that has been blown inside the clear glass of this sperical perfume bottle. The lid is a smaller sphere with elongated apllicator.
Height 105 mm
Diameter at widest point 100 mm.
Signed M.Nash?
The earliest example is Egyptian and dates to around 1000 BC. The Egyptians used scents lavishly, especially in religious rites; as a result, when they invented glass, it was largely used for perfume vessels. The fashion for perfume spread to Greece, where containers, most often terra-cotta or glass, were made in a variety of shapes and forms such as sandalled feet, birds, animals, and human heads. The Romans, who thought perfumes were aphrodisiacs, used not only molded glass bottles but also blown glass, after its invention at the end of the 1st century BC by Syrian glassmakers. The fashion for perfume declined somewhat with the beginning of Christianity, coinciding with the deterioration of glassmaking.
By the 19th century classical designs, such as those created by the English pottery ware maker Josiah Wedgwood came into fashion; but the crafts connected with perfume bottles had deteriorated. In the 1920s, however, Rene
Lalique, a leading French jeweller, revived interest in the bottles with his production of molded glass examples, characterized by iced surfaces and elaborate relief patterns.