1966.03

Attic Black-Glaze Skyphos (Corinthian type)

From the Woite Collection; probably from the area of Gela, Sicily. Ht 8.5cm; diam. 9.6cm.

One handle has been broken away and rejoined. Fairly dull black glaze. The lower wall and the top of the foot are reserved. The resting surface is black; the underside reserved and decorated with two circles and a central dot. The reserved areas are strongly reddened. The grooves about the mid-wall were made accidentally while the vase was being thrown on the wheel.

There are two predominant types of skyphos in Attic black glaze of the fifth and fourth centuries, the so-called Attic and Corinthian. The Corinthian is the more traditional version having been invented in Corinth in the mid-eighth century (where it is called a kotyle by archaeologists, cf. 1971.05 in this catalogue) and copied from time to time over the centuries in Athens where a local version was eventually developed from the sixth century on. In Athens it is light with thin, relatively curving wall, thin handles and spreading foot, flat on its upper face and with a convex curve on its lower. The reserved band on the lower wall preserves a memory of the zone of rays of earlier versions. The Attic type (or type A: 1965.10 and 1966.01 are examples) is a heavier vessel with straighter, thicker walls, more substantial handles and a torus foot; it is usually entirely black on the outside.

This example is probably to be dated soon after the middle of the fifth century BC. See the excellent discussion in B.A. Sparkes and L. Talcott, The Athenian Agora xii: Black and Plain Pottery (Princeton 1970) 81ff. There are also useful observations on the appearance of this shape in Attic red-figure: J.H. Oakley, “Attic Red-Figured Skyphoi of Corinthian Shape”, Hesperia 57, 1988, 165-191. As well as establishing their shape-sequence and periods of popularity, he observes that they tend to be decorated with scenes of women and so wonders if they were primarily used by women at this period in Athens.

See 1966.01-1966.42 in this catalogue for all material from the Woite Collection in the ANU collection.

J.R. Green with B. Rawson, Catalogue of Antiquities in the Australian National University, A.N.U. (Canberra, 1981) 45.