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| | A pitcher is an elegant shaped vessel with pictorial or stucco molding decorations made from clay, porcelain, stone or metal.
Amongst vessels of this kind, antique decorated clay pitchers deserve special attention according to their historical architecture and archaeological importance and which were found predominantly in ancient burial grounds, where the Hellenic civilization flourished or managed to penetrate.
Irrespective of its beautiful external appearance, indicating how strongly developed the taste of the ancient Greek’s handiwork even in similar semi handicraft creations, these pitchers are interesting, firstly, since the decorative pictorials gives us, up to a certain degree, a perception about the drawing skills of these people, about the nature and trend of paintings, real memorials of which did not reach us and secondly, the painting of these vessels, owing to the diversified interpretation of its themes, serves so to say, as an illustrated commentary of all Hellenic antiquity: Mythological scenes, in which the acting faces are all Olympian gods, scenes from the legends about heroes, religious and funeral ceremonies, gymnastic games, different episodes of public and private life – all such subjects, reproduced on the pitchers, keep the audience face to face with the religious beliefs and life, which disappeared long ago and helps archeologist to understand many things, which would have been in the dark for him had he used only the evidence of ancient writers.
Therefore it’s no wonder that in all civilized countries, scientists are analyzing the ancient Greek pitchers and a collection of these ancient memorials are being slowly collected and put up in all the modern museums of Europe. The Louver museum in Paris, the British museum in London, the picture gallery of Munich, Berlin’s and Neapolitan’s museums, Athenian Verve and the Emperor’s Hermitage in St. Petersburg are especially rich with these antiques. Clay painted pitchers, as mentioned above, are predominantly found in tombs; however, only in rare cases, the pitchers are found containing the ashes of the deceased. Usually, they are kept or placed near the corpse or hung on the walls of the burial vault. The majority of them belong to household utensils: one of them was used for storing dry and liquid domestic provisions, others, for mixing drinks, a third for scooping, the fourth for drinking and the fifth for the toilet potion etc. |
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