Piriform (Pear-Shaped) Jar (c. 1400–1300 BCE): Art, History and Details

Piriform (Pear-Shaped) Jar (c. 1400–1300 BCE) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

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

This shape was popular in its time as the amphora was several hundred years later, and probably served a similar function as a storage vessel. It was exported and imitated all over the Mediterranean world during the late Bronze Age.

Object facts

• Title: Piriform (Pear-Shaped) Jar
• Date: c. 1400–1300 BCE
• Culture: Greek, Mycenaean, Late Helladic IIIA1-2b
• Type: Ceramic
• Technique: ceramic
• Dimensions: Diameter: 9.8 cm (3 7/8 in.); Overall: 17.8 cm (7 in.); Diameter of base: 6.3 cm (2 1/2 in.)
• Collection: GR - Greek
• Department: Greek and Roman Art
• Accession number: 1978.60

Collection credit

Gift of Leo Mildenberg

Further reading listed by the museum

• Boulter, C. G, Jenifer Neils, and Gisela Walberg. Corpus Vasorum Antiquorum, [united States of America], The Cleveland Museum of Art. Fasc. 35. Princeton, N.J: Princeton University Press, 1971.
• Kozloff, Arielle P. Classical Art: A Brief Guide to the Collection, the Cleveland Museum of Art. [Cleveland]: The Museum, 1989.

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.