Company lamp
Company lamps are Roman oil lamps made of clay , the bases of which are usually marked with the name of the manufacturer.
Roman clay oil lamps were often made in a two-part mold. In the case of company lamps, the upper half of the form is usually undecorated or only produces a relatively simple decoration, such as a small theater mask . The name of the manufacturer is written on the bottom of the mold. The main period of use for company lamps extends from the 1st century AD to the 3rd century.
Some manufacturer names are very common. There are more than 700 known examples with the Firmus headstamp . However, lamps with the same name are sometimes made of different clay. In this case, either one manufacturer operated several workshops or successful products were copied from other manufacturers.
literature
- Siegfried Loeschcke : Lamps from Vindonissa. Beer, Zurich 1919.
- Martin Auer / Stephanie Sitz: The company lamp production of the EVCARPVS - a study of the Roman ceramic production. With contributions by Gerwulf Schneider, Aaron Plattner and Lambrini Koutoussaki, Germania 92, 2014, pp. 85–125.