I have finally got around to photographing a small pot in my care. Seemingly rebuilt from many pieces and is incomplete. It is a long necked bottle of Karpasian red and black polished ware from the north eastern peninsular of Cyprus. The form is known as an onion shaped flask and this piece is missing a long neck.
The pot dates from the early Cypriot Bronze Age, 2700-1900 BC.
The designs on the body of these flasks have been studied and catalogued and this piece is the product of the artist referenced in the catalogue of the Desmond Morris collection of ancient Cypriot pottery as “tiered diamond artist, style A”. It is note that the artist has a distinctive, calligraphic quality with the lines being boldly and heavily incised. The characteristic element is the blunt ended hatched diamond (just visible on this piece) with an open inner border. The horizontal bands are thick with six or seven lines. DM-RBP-109 is the closest in design to this example.
