Bichrome V Jug with Painted Eyes and Leaf Strokes

Cypro-Archaic II, c. 600–480 BCE · Bichrome ware (Type V) · Wheel-made

A jug with a globular body on a low ring base, a wide neck that flares upward, and a pinched trefoil mouth. The strap handle springs from the rim and rises slightly above it before dropping to the shoulder. The fabric is a warm buff, dusted with small white inclusions, and the surface is lightly worn.

Painted in matt black and red. A black band marks the base of the neck, and from it long leaf-shaped strokes fall down the body almost to the foot, on the side shown a pair of black strokes at the centre, with a pair of red strokes curving round the body on either side of them, so that the body is divided like the petals of a flower. A small black dot sits beside the black pair. A black eye is painted on the side of the spout, presumably one of a pair. The top of the handle is barred in black and a black stripe runs down its back. The strokes taper and swell with the brush.

Commentary

Black and red matt paint on a light ground define Bichrome ware in Gjerstad's system, in which the Type numeral also gives the period [1, p. 3]. The shape points to Type V. Gjerstad singles out a jug with a wide neck that "widens upwards" and a handle that "rises above the mouth" as "both characteristic features of Type V" [1, p. 53], and both appear here. That places the jug in Cypro-Archaic II, c. 600–480 BCE.

The decoration is spare and radial. In place of the circle zones and panels of Bichrome IV, the painter has hung a single crown of long strokes from the neck band and left the rest of the body open. The closest excavated parallel for the decoration comes from a tomb in the Stylli necropolis near Enkomi, published by the Swedish Cyprus Expedition: a "Bichrome V biconical jug with flat base; narrow neck; pinched mouth", with "eye-ornaments below rim, and three red, leaf-shaped strokes as front ornament", H. 15.2 cm [2, p. 201]. Its biconical body and narrow neck differ from the shape here, but the scheme of eyes and leaf strokes is the same. It came from the later of the tomb's two burial periods, above Bichrome III material, which gives an excavated sequence for the Type V date. Museum parallels for the fuller radial scheme include a Bichrome V jug in the Medelhavsmuseet, Stockholm (SHM 17946:0083, a 1925 gift from the Pierides family), H. 16 cm, with vertical leaf strokes, and two jugs in the Pitt Rivers Museum, Oxford (1884.38.54 and 1884.38.56, the second H. 16.7 cm), dated by the museum to Cypro-Archaic II, with strokes radiating from the neck.

Painted eyes on each side of a trefoil spout are a Cypro-Archaic convention that turns the mouth of the jug into a face; a Bichrome IV jug in the Cyprus Museum shown in Turin in 2021 has "an 'eyelet' ... painted on either side of the spout" [3, p. 288]. On this jug the eyes remain in use into Type V. Readings of such eyes as protective are possible but rest on the wider repertoire, and nothing on this piece settles the question.

The jug is a table pourer for liquids. Its good condition suggests a tomb context, the source of almost all complete vessels of the period, but no find-spot is recorded.