# Diatretbecher > Unknown late Roman glass workshop (diatretarius, hand and location undocumented) - First half of the 4th century CE; some literature narrows this to c. 330-340 CE > Canonical HTML: https://iconotheca.com/artworks/unknown-late-roman-cage-cup-workshop/cologne-diatretum-cage-cup/ > Published by Servola Systems GmbH. Last verified: 2026-08-15 ## Tombstone - **Artist:** Unknown late Roman glass workshop (diatretarius, hand and location undocumented) - **Date:** First half of the 4th century CE; some literature narrows this to c. 330-340 CE - **Medium:** Colorless blown or cast glass, cold-cut and ground into a free-standing openwork network (the cage) of dark purple-red, gold-yellow and emerald-green glass, joined to the inner cup by short colorless struts - **Dimensions:** Height 12.1 cm (no other dimension published in the sources consulted) - **Object type:** Glass - **Period:** Late Roman, Rhineland (Germania Inferior/Secunda), first half of the 4th century CE - **Current location:** Romisch-Germanisches Museum, Cologne, Germany - **Attribution:** unknown ## Summary A colorless glass beaker 12.1 cm high, encased in a free-standing network of dark red, yellow and green glass cut so that it appears to float around the cup on short struts, with a Greek drinking toast, Drink, live well, forever, cut in purple-red letters below the rim. It was found in 1960 in a sandstone sarcophagus in a Roman cemetery on the edge of Cologne, one of a documented handful of cage cups, a small and technically extraordinary class of late Roman luxury glass, to survive at all.How its cage was actually cut or formed is a genuine, still-open dispute in the scholarship: cold-ground from a single solid blank, as the classic theory holds, or shaped with the help of a mould, as a rival theory argues. Neither side has fully replicated the ancient process, and modern glassmakers who have tried have not settled the question. This is a separate object from the more famous Lycurgus Cup in the British Museum, which belongs to the same broad class but is a distinct, dichroic, colour-changing piece; nothing in the sources consulted suggests the Cologne cup shares that optical property.The find itself raises its own unresolved questions: which of the burials in the cemetery the cup belonged to, why so costly an object sits, on one account, among otherwise modest grave goods, and where the workshop that made it actually stood. ## Provenance Every link carries a grade. `documented` means a cited source supports it, `disputed` means the identification is argued but not established, `unknown` means we have no owner for that span and have not bridged it. - **First half of 4th century CE (manufacture)** Unknown late Roman glass workshop, region undocumented `[unknown]` (origin) No maker, workshop name, or confirmed place of manufacture is documented for this piece. A Rhineland origin is argued by some scholars on the basis of findspot patterning (this cup and a separate example both surfaced in or near Cologne) but is not demonstrated. - **c. 4th century CE** Unnamed deceased individual(s) interred in the villa rustica cemetery, Koln-Braunsfeld/Koln-Mungersdorf `[disputed]` (deposition as a grave good) That the cup was deposited as a grave good in a sandstone sarcophagus at this cemetery is documented by the 1960 excavation. Which individual within the grave assemblage it belonged to, and whether the surrounding grave goods were as modest as one secondary account states, is not settled and is the subject of a dedicated scholarly article on the problem of assigning grave goods to individuals in this specific grave. - **c. 4th century CE-1960** Undisturbed in the sarcophagus `[documented]` (burial to rediscovery) The archaeological context recorded at excavation (an intact sarcophagus within an undisturbed cemetery) is the evidence that the cup lay in place from its deposition until the 1960 excavation, roughly sixteen centuries. - **1960** City of Cologne, via excavation directed by Otto Doppelfeld `[documented]` (excavation and accession) Excavated 1960 at the corner of Stolberger Strasse and Eupener Strasse; published by Doppelfeld in the Kolner Jahrbuch fur Vor- und Fruhgeschichte, 1961. Entered the museum's collection directly as an archaeological find under German antiquities law; there is no market transaction to document. - **1960-present** Romisch-Germanisches Museum, Cologne (inventory 60,1) `[documented]` (museum collection) Continuously held by the museum since 1960. No export question, private ownership, or auction history exists for this piece. ## Open questions - How was the cage actually formed: cold-cut and ground freehand from a single solid glass blank, as the classic Fremersdorf account holds, or shaped with the aid of a mould, as Rosemary Lierke has argued since the 1990s? Whitehouse's 2015 study did not settle it, and a 2020 review of that study says explicitly that the debate continues. - To which burial, and to which individual within that burial, did the cup actually belong? A dedicated scholarly article exists on the general problem of assigning grave goods to individuals in this specific late-antique grave; this record could not obtain a settled answer from the sources consulted. - One secondary account describes the rest of the grave goods found with the cup as comparatively mundane, which would make an object of this cost and difficulty an archaeological puzzle in that burial specifically; a separate account of grave goods from the same cemetery's cremation burial describes richer material. This record could not reconcile the two accounts without the primary 1961 excavation report and flags the discrepancy rather than resolving it. - Was this cup made in the Rhineland, given that at least two cage cups (this one and the separate Munich example) were both found in or near Cologne, or was it imported from elsewhere in the Roman world and simply deposited on the frontier? Argued on both sides, not demonstrated. - Is this specific vessel one of the pieces examined in Hallie Meredith's 2025 research identifying maker's-mark symbols on cage cups? Press coverage describes a piece matching this cup's exact inscription and date range among those studied, but no source consulted names the Romisch-Germanisches Museum explicitly, so the identification remains probable but unconfirmed. - Has a modern chemical or compositional analysis been carried out on this specific piece? None was located in the sources consulted for this record, though such analyses exist for other diatreta fragments. ## Sources - [1] Romisch-Germanisches Museum Koln, Staendige Sammlung (permanent collection page) - [2] Deutsche Digitale Bibliothek, catalogue record for the Diatretbecher mit roter Schrift und grunem Netz, inventory 60,1 - [3] Bildindex der Kunst und Architektur, object record for the Diatretbecher, Koln, Stolberger Strasse - [4] Museen der Stadt Koln, Bild der Woche feature on the Diatretbecher ('Ein glasernes Meisterwerk') - [5] kuladig.de, object entry on the Roman cremation grave and villa rustica cemetery, Koln-Mungersdorf/Wendelinstrasse, including the sarcophagus cemetery that produced the cage cup - [6] Bookseller catalogue description of Otto Doppelfeld, 'Das Diatretglas aus dem Graberbezirk des romischen Gutshofs von Koln-Braunsfeld', Kolner Jahrbuch fur Vor- und Fruhgeschichte 5 (1960/61), pp. 34-44. The primary excavation report itself was not directly consulted for this record and should be obtained and checked against the claims here. - [7] Wikipedia, 'Cage cup'. Tertiary source; flagged for replacement with Whitehouse, Gudenrath and Roberts 2015 and the primary excavation literature for individual pieces. - [8] Wikipedia (German), 'Diatretglas'. Tertiary source; flagged for replacement with the primary excavation and technical literature. - [9] Journal of Roman Archaeology, review 'Diatreta (cage cups): the debate continues', of David Whitehouse, with William Gudenrath and Paul Roberts, Cage Cups: Late Roman Luxury Glasses (Corning Museum of Glass, 2015) - [10] Corning Museum of Glass, publication page for Cage Cups: Late Roman Luxury Glasses - [11] Archaeology News Online Magazine, 'Hidden signatures of ancient Roman master glassmakers uncovered' (November 2025), reporting Hallie Meredith's research published in the Journal of Glass Studies (April 2025) and World Archaeology (October 2025) - [12] Interesting Engineering, '1,700-year-old logo on prized Roman cage cups uncovered in new study' - [13] Flickr, Carole Raddato, photo series captioned 'The Cologne diatreta glass bowl (cage cup), 1st half of 4th century AD, found in Cologne from grave 5 in the family cemetery of a villa rustica...Romisch-Germanisches Museum, Cologne', used here for image attribution --- Images on this record are public domain or CC0 and are hosted by us. 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