Black-Gloss Mug (late 400s–300s BCE): Art, History and Details

Black-Gloss Mug (late 400s–300s BCE) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

Nearly cylindrical with a vertical ring handle, this vessel looks like a modern cup for tea or coffee—drinks not known in the classical world. Although the shape is unusual for an ancient drinking vessel, other examples exist, and the manufacture is typical. Turned on a wheel, the cup has a flat base and seven applied fillets adorning the exterior. Its black-gloss coating derives from the same firing technology used for black-figure and red-figure decoration.

Object facts

• Title: Black-Gloss Mug
• Date: late 400s–300s BCE
• Culture: South Italian
• Type: Ceramic
• Technique: ceramic
• Dimensions: Diameter: 7.6 cm (3 in.); Overall: 6.9 cm (2 11/16 in.); Diameter of foot: 8 cm (3 1/8 in.)
• Collection: GR - Greek
• Department: Greek and Roman Art
• Accession number: 1991.167

A detail from the museum

The black-gloss finish of this mug derives from fired clay slip, not black pigment.

Collection credit

Anonymous gift in honor of the Museum's seventy-fifth anniversary

Further reading listed by the museum

• Beazley Archive. n.d. Beazley Archive Pottery Database. Oxford: Beazley Archive.
• Sotheby's (Firm). Egyptian, Greek, Etruscan, Roman and Western Asiatic Antiquities and Islamic Works of Art. 1991.
• Turner, Evan H. “The Year in Review for 1992.” The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 80, no. 2 (February 1993): 38–79.

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.