Cleveland Museum of Art

Pot with Cover

Date

100s CE

Medium

tan ware with gray and some brown burnished slip

Culture

Rhenish (Cologne), Gallo-Roman, 2nd century

Department

Greek and Roman Art

Institution

Cleveland Museum of Art

The work of Roman potters is very different from that of their Greek predecessors. Greek clay had allowed potters to throw thin-walled ceramics. Slips (paint) made from this clay had permitted painters to draw complicated scenes and figures with infinite care. As the Roman empire grew to include Germany and Britain, local clays found there were better for producing heavier pottery with three-dimensional decoration like the vases shown here. These jars--decorated with a human face (1992.125), animals (1992.126), a feather pattern (1992.183), a wheat pattern (1992.124), and vertical ribs (1992.127,a) were probably filled with foods or liquids and given either as gifts to an elaborate burial or as offerings to a god's shrine.

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