Megarian bowls

Relief-decorated pottery with scenes from epic poetry and from Classical Greek tragedy became more popular than painted pottery during the Hellenistic period. The name Megarian was first given to this type of mold-made relief bowl in the late nineteenth century, because some of the first known examples were said to have come from the city of Megara. It has since been demonstrated that bowls of this type, which were produced at a number of different centers, originated in Athens in the third quarter of the third century B.C.E. - Metropolitan Museum of Art

Unlike earlier, wheelmade wares with surfaces decorated only with slip, paint, and glaze, these bowls were made in stamp-decorated molds that added decoration in relief. This method of manufacture gave the vessels an embossed effect that may have been intended to imitate metalwork. The vessels were thrown on a potter's wheel while inside the mold in order to produce a smooth and even inner surface while allowing the outside to pick up the pattern of the mold clearly.  The molds themselves were made on the wheel and decorated on the interior with stamps. These bowls functioned as drinking cups and replaced the earlier kantharos shape. - Summer Trentin and Debby Sneed, University of Colorado

Such bowls depicting mythological scenes as well as floral bowls with figures like Eros were produced in the 3rd to 2nd century BCE.  In the 2nd century BCE, though, the floral and figural bowls were replaced by a more stylized type with repeated petal-like motifs referred to as "Long-Petal Bowls." 

In Italy, these thin-walled molded bowls became known as "Popilius" bowls since a number of them signed by C. Popilius have been discovered around workshops in Umbria, north of Rome on the Via Flaminia.  However, other workshops of different potters have been found in Tivoli, Cosa, and Arezzo. Some scholars point to a shift from controlled to more dramatic naturalism in their decoration.

Terracotta Megarian bowl, 2nd century B.C.E., Boeotian, at the Metropolitan Museum of Art depicting a scene from Euripides' play "Iphigenia at Aulis", a messenger, Agamemnon, who has weakened in his resolve to sacrifice his daughter to Artemis, biding his slave to take a letter to his wife, Clytemnestra, instructing her not to send her daughter to Aulis.

 

Terracotta Megarian bowl, 2nd century B.C.E., Boeotian, at the Metropolitan Museum of Art depicting a scene from Euripides' play "Iphigenia at Aulis", Agamemnon's brother, taking the letter from the messenger by force; Menelaos, with the letter in hand, blaming Agamemnon for refusing to go through with the sacrifice.

Terracotta Megarian bowl, 2nd century B.C.E., Boeotian, at the Metropolitan Museum of Art depicting a scene from Euripides' play "Iphigenia at Aulis", a messenger, bringing news to Agamemnon that Iphigenia has arrived

Terracotta Megarian bowl, 2nd century B.C.E., Boeotian, at the Metropolitan Museum of Art depicting a scene from Euripides' play "Iphigenia at Aulis", the cart that has come from Argos, bearing Queen Clytemnestra and her children, Iphigenia and the little Orestes. The story would have been continued on additional bowls.

Terracotta Megarian bowl, Greek, 165-100 BCE at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.

Terracotta Megarian bowl, Greek, 165-100 BCE at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.

Megarian bowl from a Rhodian workshop depicting scenes from the Trojan War and the Odyssey, 3d/2nd century B.C.E. at the antinkensammlung Museum in Berlin, Germany courtesy of Wikimedia Commons contributor Marcus Cyron.

Nike crowning a trophy, Poseidon, Ariadne with Dionysos supported by a satyr, and Athena with shield and spear, Terracotta Megarian bowl, 2nd century B.C.E. at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.

The reddish-brown glaze of this bowl suggests it was made in Asia Minor, and perhaps more specifically, Pergamon. Red-ware, as this type of pottery is called, had a relatively short period of production. It was ultimately supplanted by red-glossed Roman terra-sigillata and Arrentine pottery beginning around the middle of the 1st century B.C.E. Courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.

Relief-moulded black Megarian bowl, c. 225-175 BCE at the British Museum, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons contributor AgTigress.

Megarian bowl With Dionysiac thiasos from ancient Epidaurus at the Archaeological Museum of Nafplion, 200-150 BCE, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons contributor Zde.

Megarian bowl from a Macedonian workshop depicting the homecoming of Odysseus; 3d/2nd century B.C.E. at the Antikensammlung Museum in Berlin, Germany courtesy of Wikimedia Commons. (digitally enhanced)

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