Greek Hellenistic Calenian Black-Gloss Guttus | Gorgoneion Medallion

Southern Italy, Campania, Greek, Hellenistic period. A squat, wheel-thrown guttus in lustrous black-glazed earthenware, its depressed globular body ringed with fine vertical gadroons and drawn out to a tall, flaring trumpet spout. A high strap ring handle springs from the shoulder opposite. The flattened upper face carries the vessel's chief ornament: a moldmade tondo bearing a gorgoneion in low relief, the face frontal and framed by concentric incised circles. Gutti of this type, produced at Cales and its Campanian neighbors, were filling vessels, their narrow apertures metering oil into lamps or dispensing measured drafts of liquid, and the same shapes served in the sickroom and at the table. The apotropaic Gorgon's head, glaring outward from the vessel's crown, was the standard guardian motif of the Calene repertoire. Calene ware takes its name from Cales in northern Campania, where workshops of the later 4th and 3rd centuries BCE mass-produced black-glaze relief wares using clay molds, several of them signed by their makers (the names Canoleios, Gabinius, and Retus survive on stamped medallions). The technique is essentially industrial: the body thrown on the wheel, the ornamental tondo pressed from a reusable mold and luted on, the whole then slipped and fired to the deep metallic sheen that imitates the toreutic silver plate of wealthier tables. The gorgoneion itself had, by the Hellenistic period, softened from the archaic grimace with lolling tongue and tusks into a rounder, more human mask, still potent but no longer monstrous. Its placement at the top of the vessel is deliberate: the face looks up at whoever pours, turning a domestic implement into a small ward against harm. A Certificate of Authenticity will accompany all winning bids. Item # 204992

Estimate:£336.38

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