Near East, Byzantine Empire, ca. 12th century CE. A pottery bowl that was manufactured for domestic use; it has a white, decorated interior with ringed registers of abstract, waviform designs and a spade-like leaf in tondo. The exterior is unglazed and undecorated. Byzantine pottery workshops that created glazed ware for domestic use based their designs on vessels made of silver or other precious metals. They used the technique called sgraffito, with the design incised through a white slip coating to reveal the red clay body beneath. These bowls were made and exported throughout the Empire. This particular example, based on its deposits, was lost in a shipwreck. In the past few decades, there have been a tremendous amount of Byzantine shipwrecks discovered; for example, there is currently a major project excavating 37 individual wrecks from a site called Yenikapi, once a port in Constantinople, that contains the largest collection of ships ever uncovered from a single site. Size: 7.85" W x 2.7" H (19.9 cm x 6.9 cm)

Provenance: private New Jersey USA collection, acquired over twenty years ago

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#121440

Intact, with light, white deposits, particularly on the exterior, consistent with having been lost in a shipwreck.