Shallow Bowl
6th-4th century BCE
Description
Hammered from a single sheet of metal, this silver phiale (libation bowl) has a shallow central navel or omphalos and is decorated with a pattern of radiating petals or leaves and, inserted between them, 14 lobes rendered in repoussé. The tips of the petals split to form an arch above each lobe, and a small upside-down teardrop appears where they split, as if growing from a calyx of leaves. There is a centering mark on the undersaide of the omphalos, and there are fine horizontal striations especially on the exterior of the rim. Black and brown patina with patches of green; crack in one lobe.
Dimensions
4.7 × 16.9 cm, 44.67 g (1 7/8 × 6 5/8 in.) Thickness of wall at rim: 0.1 cm (1/16 in.) Weight: 280 grams
Provenance
Frances L. Hofer, Cambridge, MA, (by 1979), bequest; to Fogg Art Museum, 1979.
Related Artworks
View MoreEnameled porcelain: porcelain with decoration painted in overglaze yellow, pink, and red enamels and scrolling floral pattern lightly incised in the yellow enamel; with spurious underglaze cobalt blue mark reading "Da Qing Qianlong nian zhi" in seal-script characters on the base
18th-19th centuryChineseTerracotta
4th-3rd century BCESouth ItalianBrown-and-white ware: porcelain with decoration painted in underglaze iron-brown slip
16th-17th centuryKoreanFritware with underglaze painting in cobalt blue
18th centuryPersianJizhou ware: light gray stoneware with tortoiseshell glaze on the exterior, and with papercut decoration reserved in dark brown glaze against a variegated buff ground on the interior. From the kilns at Yonghe, Ji'an, Jiangxi province.
13th-14th centuryChineseTerracotta
GreekMetal
20th centuryGermanInlaid celadon ware: light gray stoneware with celadon glaze over decoration inlaid in white slip
13th centuryKoreanTurned bronze
9th centuryChinese
Copper alloy
1st century CETerracotta
8th century BCEGreek