9. Greek South Italic Blackware Salt Dish

C. 4th Century B.C.

A glazed blackware pottery salt dish from south eastern Italy, Circa. 4th Century B.C.

From the Greek colonies in Southern Italy. An quite large salt dish with a raised base. These were a common item on Ancient Greek dining tables and where food was prepared. Salt was an essential and highly prized commodity.

Condition: Restored (part).

Dimensions: 15cm x 5.8cm.

Provenance: Ex. Private collection, UK.

SOLD

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South Italic Pottery

South Italic pottery refers to Ancient Greek pottery manufactured in this area, which was also known as “Magna Graecia”, largely in the fourth century BC. Athenian painted pottery had continued to be exported from Attica to a wide variety of places, including Italy, since the sixth century BC, and was perceived as a mark of high status and considered exceptionally beautiful due to the distinctive colour of Attic clay which gave pottery from this region its striking red hue. Attic potters and painters choosing to settle in Southern Italy during the mid-fifth century established workshops there and, soon, local artists began to learn their methods and techniques, meaning that imports from Athens were no longer desirable.

Though the South Italian potters employed similar techniques and favoured similar subject-matters to their Attic counterparts, nevertheless they adapted certain features and developed new practices, so that the emergence of a distinctive South Italian style can be discerned. The five main South Italian vase-producing regions were Apulia, Lucania, Paestum, Campania and Sicily, which in turn owned their own workshops, featuring their own unique characteristics.