Cypro-Classical Plain White Ware Wine Jug or Oinochoe

Cypro-Classical I period, c. 475-400 BC, Republic of Cyprus

Exceptional wheel-made pottery wine jug or oinochoe of Plain White Ware VI from Cypro-Classical I (CCI) period featuring ovoid-biconical body on a low conical foot, conical neck and a elegant trefoil spout. A single high strap handle extends from the edge of the rim to the waist of the vessel. A series of shallow parallel grooves around the body. Coarse, light, buff clay with white grits. The pottery of ancient Cyprus starts during the Neolithic period. Throughout the ages, Cypriot ceramics demonstrate many connections with cultures from around the Mediterranean. During the Early and Middle Bronze Ages, it is especially imaginative in shape and decoration. In the pottery of the Cypro-Classical period, the tendencies already apparent in later stages of the Cypro-Archaic II (CA II) period continue and strengthen. In the category of fine ware ceramics, the Plain White becomes a very popular technique. It is abudantly represented by a variety of jugs, in paricular those which develop the shape of the dipper sack-shaped jug of Levantine origin, as well as by different types of handless bowls.

The island of Cyprus, officially called the Republic of Cyprus is located in the northeast corner of the Mediterranean Sea, south of Turkey, west of Lebanon and Syria, north of Egypt, and southeast of Greece. Cyprus' geographical location was strategic crossroads linking the Aegean, Anatolia, the Levant and Egypt, and as such played an important role in the ancient Mediterranean commercial network. Throughout the Classical period (5th and 4th centuries BC) Cyprus remained under Persian control. Cyprus finally regained relative freedom for a short time when the Macedonian king Alexander the Great granted greater independence to the island. Following his death in 323 BC, Cyprus was annexed by Ptolemaic Egypt, under whose control it remained throughout the Hellenistic period.

Excellent condition. Intact. No chips, cracks or fractures. No repairs. Museum number: S.R: 7371/75. Size approx. 17,5cm x 11,5cm x 11,5cm. 

NB! Comes with original documents, including Licence to Export Antiquities No. 99370, issued under Antiquities Law, Cap. 43, Form F.18. Republic of Cyprus, Department of Antiquities, dated and signed 9.1.1979.

Provenance: 

Cyprus Archaeological Museum, Nicosia, Cyprus.

acquired from the above, 1979

with danish private collection

For a similar examples see:

Jug, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Accession Number: 74.51.427 (https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/240013)

Trefoil Jug, Penn Museum, University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, Accession Number: 54-41-28 (https://www.penn.museum/collections/object/292959)

References and further reading:

Pottery of Geometric, Archaic and Classical periods in Cyprus,  Anna, P. Georgiadou, Kyprios Character. History, Archaeology & Numismatics of Ancient Cyprus (kyprioscharacter.eie.gr/en/t/A0)

Pottery Types, Cypro-Geometric to Cypro-Classical, Einar Gjerstad, Opuscula Atheniensia. 7 (7): pp. 105–122, 1960.

Handbook of the Cesnola Collection of Antiquities from Cyprus, John L. Myres, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1914.

Swedish Cyprus Expedition IV, 2. The Cypro-geometric, Cypro-archaic and Cypro-classical Periods, Einar Gjerstad, Stockholm: Swedish Cyprus Expedition, 1948.