Cypriot red-ware oinochoe

An intact wheel-thrown oenochoe black-on-red ware with a squat ring base and a conjoint handle and trefoil lip. The spherical body is decorated with multiple, tightly grouped, concentric circles, painted using a multiple brush, enclosing smaller concentric arranged around a bull’s-eye on every face, a decorative motif very popular during this time period in Cyprus, and crossed linear design between the neck and a single bull’s eye; three bands around the tapered neck in black and a lengthy swath of pigment on the bifurcated handle arching between rim and shoulder. The edge of the rim is also painted.

Object number: 127.003.

Date: 700–600 B.C.

Parallels: very similar examples London, British Museum 1869,0604.6, 1873,0320.100, 1876,0220.33; compare with 1880,0710.4, 1880,0710.6, 1880,0710.72, 1883,0106.105, 1890,0731.42, 1894,1101.286, 1894,1101.527; Brooklyn, Brooklyn Museum 22.16; New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art 74.51.491, 74.51.607; Columbia, Museum of Art and Archaeology 61.33; Athens, Museum of Cycladic Art Ζ0628; Armidale, Museum of Antiquities at the University of New England, MA1959.1.15.

References: Walters, H B., Forsdyke, E J., Smith, C. H., Catalogue of Vases in the British Museum, London: BMP, 1893-1925; Murray, A. S., Smith, A. H. and Walters, H. B., Excavations in Cyprus, London: BMP, 1900; Gjerstad, E., SCE IV/2 / The Swedish Cyprus Expedition, vol. IV. Part 2. The Cypro-Geometric, Cypro-Archaic and Cypro-Classical periods, Stockholm: Swedish Cyprus Expedition, 1948; Bailey, D., “The village priest's tomb at Aradippou in Cyprus”, British Museum Magazine, 34, 1970, pp.36-58; Fletcher, R., “A Cypro-Phoenician Oinochoe in Attic Black-Figure”, Ancient West & East, 2008, 7, pp. 219-235; Bourogiannis, G., "Eastern influence on Rhodian Geometric pottery: foreign elements and local receptiveness", Cyprus and the East Aegean: Intercultural contacts from 3000, 2009, pp. 114-130.

Photo by Steve Morton