Button handle shell
In modern research, a special form of the Attic bowl is called a button- handle cup ( Merrythought Cup ) .
The button-handle shell was probably created as a refined form of a rural type of shell made from wood. The shell shape has several special features. It is the first Attic bowl shape in which the lip was not separated from the bowl body. The handles are also noticeable. They do not form a semicircle like almost all other bowl shapes, but are bent upwards and end in a button-like shape. This is where the modern name comes from. The fork-shaped handles even go beyond the shell body, which is also unusual.
On the base and inside the shell, which is usually covered in black, can have pairs of thin red stripes painted on it. This is reminiscent of Eastern Greek and other Attic forms of ornament. The body of the vase had an almost hemispherical shape. The first Attic artist to decorate this bowl shape in the black-figure style was the C-Painter .
The Lower Italian patera is also sometimes referred to as a button-handle shell.
literature
- John Boardman : Black-Figure Vases from Athens. A handbook (= cultural history of the ancient world . Vol. 1). von Zabern, Mainz 1977, ISBN 3-8053-0233-9 , p. 36.
