Portland Vase
Roman cameo glass vase
The Portland Vase is a Roman cameo glass vase, which dates between AD 1 and AD 25, though low BC dates have some scholarly support. It is the best known piece of Roman cameo glass and has served as an inspiration to many glass and porcelain makers from about the beginning of the 18th century onwards. It was first recorded in Rome in 1600–1601, and since 1810 has been in the British Museum in London. The museum held it on loan from the dukes of Portland until 1945, and bought it from them that year (GR 1945,0927.1). It is normally on display in Room 70.
The vase measures about 25 centimetres (9.8 in) high and 18 cm (7.1 in) in diameter. It is made of violet-blue glass, and surrounded with a single continuous white glass cameo making two distinct scenes, depicting seven human figures, plus a large snake, and two bearded and horned heads below the handles, marking the break between the scenes.
The bottom of the vase was a cameo glass disc, also in blue and white, showing a head, presumed to be of Paris or Priam based on the Phrygian cap it wears. This roundel clearly does not belong to the vase and has been displayed separately since 1845. It may have been added in antiquity or later, or is the result of a conversion from an original amphora form (paralleled by a similar blue-glass cameo vessel from Pompeii).
The public source identifies “Portland Vase” as roman cameo glass vase. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Portland, Vase and Roman.
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Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 13, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q609292. VIAF identifies the subject as 194070340. The Library of Congress control number is sh2005002689. 1 of 4 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1600, 1601, 1810 and 1945.
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This entry incorporates text from “Portland Vase” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.