Pot with Cover (100s CE): Art, History and Details

Pot with Cover (100s CE) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

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

The work of Roman potters is very different from that of their Greek predecessors. Greek clay had allowed potters to throw thin-walled ceramics. Slips (paint) made from this clay had permitted painters to draw complicated scenes and figures with infinite care. As the Roman empire grew to include Germany and Britain, local clays found there were better for producing heavier pottery with three-dimensional decoration like the vases shown here. These jars--decorated with a human face (1992.125), animals (1992.126), a feather pattern (1992.183), a wheat pattern (1992.124), and vertical ribs (1992.127,a) were probably filled with foods or liquids and given either as gifts to an elaborate burial or as offerings to a god's shrine.

Object facts

• Title: Pot with Cover
• Date: 100s CE
• Culture: Rhenish (Cologne), Gallo-Roman, 2nd century
• Type: Ceramic
• Technique: tan ware with gray and some brown burnished slip
• Dimensions: Diameter: 15.6 cm (6 1/8 in.); Overall: 13.1 cm (5 3/16 in.); Lid: 2.2 x 9.8 cm (7/8 x 3 7/8 in.)
• Collection: GR - Roman
• Department: Greek and Roman Art
• Accession number: 1992.127.a

Collection credit

John L. Severance Fund

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.