Listen as former curator David Whitehouse describes an ewer signed by Ennion. The discovery that vessels could be formed and decorated by inflating a gob of glass in a mold permitted large numbers of virtually identical objects to be produced quickly and inexpensively.
The first-century Roman writer Pliny believed that glassmaking had been invented at Sidon (in modern Lebanon), which in his day was still a famous center of production. For this reason, the earliest mold-blown vessels are frequently described as “Sidonian,” although we cannot be sure if any were actually made there.
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The finest “Sidonian” vessels bear the signature of Ennion. The quality of the vessel depended on the quality of the mold in which it was blown. Ennion may have been a particularly skillful moldmaker, rather than the proprietor or gaffer (master craftsman) of a glassmaking workshop. On this ewer, the signature (“Ennion made [it]”), written in Greek, is in a panel beneath the handle.
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