Letter from Stewart to Schuster about Cypriot potteryJames Rivers Barrington Stewart

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The University of Sydney

SYDNEY, N.S.W. Mount Pleasant, Bathurst. N.S.W. [printed: IN REPLY PLEASE QUOTE] Australia

1st September, 1960

Professor Carl Schuster, R.F.D. Box 416, Woodstock. N.Y.

Dear Professor Schuster,

Thank you for your letter of August 24th. My wife is making a drawing of the design on the pot, of which Professor Schaeffer sent a photograph. Unfortunately the Tomb number marked on the pot in ink proves to be incorrect and it is not possible to identify the piece in the tomb inventories as the form is so exceedingly common.

You will find a considerable Corpus of decorated Cypriot pottery in the next volume of the Swedish Cyprus Expedition (vol IV Pt 1). This Corpus includes all the complete decorated pieces from my own excavations and a large percentage from those of the Swedish work. Unfortunately I was unable to publish the drawings of fragments and of decorative patterns,which remain in my archives against a better day. Variations of the butterfly or hourglass motive are not uncommon and some particularly fine examples occur in the designs incised on the cult vessels from my excavations; these objects have been omitted from the Swedish publication as they would have taken up too much space and will make quite a good monograph on their own. I am sorry that we have not got time to make copies of all the occurrances of the butterfly for you; you should, perhaps, see what Paul Åström has to say in the Middle Cypriote Bronze Age (Lund, 1957: butterfly pattern in the index).

I would like to see a photograph of the Red Ware vase in Chicago, which you mention, since the ornamentation in your sketch is most unusual. I might be able to give you a date for it.

Yours sincerely,

Handwritten: signature: James R. Stewart

Professor J. R. Stewart