![]() 10 Zwierlein-Diehl, Wien I 1973: 14 “plasmas”, 1 from Aquileia no. 523: Portrait of a Roman lady with (.).Only ten intaglios are preserved in their original ring setting: two are from Reims/France (FG 2373 FG 2481 – lost), one was found near the Rhine River in Cologne (FG 2401: fig. 1), and two most probably were acquired in the Black Sea area (FG 2424 Misc. The majority of the rest also came from Italy, including the Dressel gems. Most of the items in the old Berlin Antiquarium came from the Collection of Baron Philipp von Stosch, assembled mainly in Rome and central Italy during the first half of the 18 th century and acquired in 1764 by King Friedrich II. ![]() 5 Together with 35 “plasma” gems from the Collection Heinrich Dressel, which was acquired by the museum in 1920 6, the total number of “kleine Praser” in Berlin is greater than that of any other published collection, and in relation to parallels discovered and published during the last century, the Berlin collection offers the single most substantial reference to validate Furtwängler’s classification scheme. Within the vast collection of engraved gems in the Antikensammlung Berlin (Furtwängler published 11.872 individual objects in his 1896 catalogue already), the “kleine Praser” only form a small group but among the 199 ancient gems in his index of materials under the term “Smaragdplasma” they account for more than 180 items. Julius Caesar († 44 BC) to Domitian (r. 81‑96 AD) – are associated not only by their material and form, but also by their rather limited devices, such as copies of well-known statues, heads of gods and bucolic scenes. ![]() As Furtwängler observed, a group of rather small, mostly bi-convex engraved gems of Roman date – from the time of C. 59, 13‑14 and 19‑20 Greifenhagen I 1970, p. 49 (.)ģ The rare chromian chalcedony appears to have been utilized by gem engravers in antiquity only for a short period of time. The translucent green chalcedony varieties implied in collection catalogues and archaeological texts are distinguished throughout this essay by enclosing cited authors’ terms “prase”, “chrysoprase”, and “plasma” in quotation marks. Gemologically, chrysoprase is a translucent nickel-bearing chalcedony of apple green color. ![]() Because of the confusion over historical and gemological nomenclature, prase and plasma are avoided as gemological terms throughout this article. Although gemologists know both plasma and green jasper as opaque microcrystalline quartz, historians and archaeologist apply the terms “prase”, “chrysoprase”, or “plasma” to translucent green microcrystalline quartz, and green jasper to the opaque variety. Even until now, gemological verification seldom has been sought to confirm gemstone identities made by eye alone, so confusion and inconsistencies in naming gemstones of the ancient world persist. Historically, all these terms have been used interchangeably, and also with chrysoprase, chrysolite (olivine), and aventurine quartz or even the opaque green jasper. 37,113) – is an obsolete term for translucent green fine-grained chalcedony: it is a material that has been known by other names, including “Prasem”, “Smaragdplasma”, and “plasma”. “Praser” – from the Latin “ prasius ” = leek colored (Plinius, nat.hist.
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