Byzantine Empire, ca. 12th century CE. A bowl glazed for domestic use with a decorated interior of registers of wavy lines. Byzantine pottery workshops that created glazed ware for domestic use based their designs on vessels made of silver or other precious metals so that aspiring members of the merchant class could also own beautiful tablewares. 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. Size: 8.05" W x 2.8" H (20.4 cm x 7.1 cm)

In the past few decades, many Byzantine shipwrecks have been discovered; for example, there is currently a major project excavating 37 individual wrecks from a site called Yenikapi, which was a port in Constantinople, found during the construction of a new high speed rail tunnel under the Bosporus, which is the largest collection of ships ever uncovered from a single site. These trading ships carried hundreds, if not thousands, of pieces of domestic pottery like this one.

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

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#121257

Repaired from four large pieces, with overpainting on repair lines; repairs are difficult to see. Sea encrustations on surface as shown, with sgraffito still visible over about half of the bowl.