Bichrome IV Amphora with a Lotus-and-Bud Shoulder Frieze

Cypro-Archaic I, c. 750–600 BCE, probably 7th century · Bichrome IV ware · Wheel-made

A large two-handled amphora with an ovoid body, widest at the shoulder and tapering to a low ring foot. The tall neck widens slightly to a heavy, flat, out-turned rim. Two thick loop handles rise from the shoulder toward the neck, each with two dark strokes running down the body from its lower root. The pale buff surface is painted in matt brown-black and brick red. The neck is framed above and below by rows of short vertical strokes. On both faces its central panel holds a St Andrew's cross laid over concentric lozenges around a small latticed lozenge; above each handle the panel holds instead a red volute flower with a lozenge heart. The panels are flanked by columns of running S-spirals and ruled line-panels. On the shoulder hangs a frieze of lotus flowers alternating with buds, dark-outlined and washed with red and brown. Beneath the handles, a red rayed triangle fills the gap. A cable band follows, then close-set fine lines between broad bands. The lower body is left plain buff, crossed by two widely spaced bands.

Commentary

The shape is Gjerstad's Bichrome IV "Amphora 2": an amphora with handles on the shoulder, the body widest at or just below the shoulder, and a cylindrical or slightly widening neck with a flat, out-turned rim [1]. Bichrome is White Painted technique with a second colour added, matt red beside the dark paint, and the numeral IV places it in Gjerstad's fourth ceramic stage, Cypro-Archaic I, c. 750–600 BCE [1]. In this stage the neck becomes the main ornamental field, divided into panels of geometric and floral ornament, as it is here [1].

The decoration follows a formula that the Metropolitan Museum's catalogue sets out for the class: large Bichrome IV amphorae, common in the east of the island, with a shoulder frieze of lotus flowers alternating with buds on each side and lotus flowers in panels alternating with geometric motifs on the neck [2]. The Met amphora 74.51.972, from the Cesnola Collection, H. 80.3 cm and said to be from Ormidhia, is the closest published parallel. It shares the overall scheme: a shoulder frieze of lotus flowers alternating with buds, a neck of lotus and geometric panels, and a plain, banded lower body [2]. The Pierides Foundation Museum in Larnaca holds three more of the series, nos 154–156, between 58.5 and 80.7 cm high, all with panelled necks and stylised lotus [3]. The Cyprus Museum amphora 1935/B 2009 (H. 47.5 cm, archaeological context unknown) replaces the lotus chain with sphinxes flanking a lotus, the figured variant of the same Eastern style, and a related Cyprus Museum amphora with a lotus frieze and neck panels is dated around 600 BCE [4].

The lotus is the Egyptian water-lily as it reached Cyprus through Phoenician and Levantine metalwork, ivories and textiles. On this amphora it has become pattern: the flowers and buds are drawn to a template and coloured alternately, and they hang from the border like a fringe. Gjerstad's "Eastern style", with its floral and rectilinear ornament, is a regional tendency in his material, set against the circle-based decoration more common in the west and north of the island [1].

The fully developed lotus chain, the tall, near-cylindrical neck and the concentration of ornament on the upper third of the pot all belong to mature Cypro-Archaic I. A date in the 7th century BCE is likely, though the class cannot be dated more closely without a tomb context.

Vessels of this size were storage vessels that ended their use in chamber tombs. The painted amphorae of this class seem to have stayed on the island: the Cypriot pottery that travelled overseas in these centuries was mostly small juglets for oil and perfume. What these amphorae held, whether wine, oil or grain, has not been established by residue analysis for the class. The find-spot of this example is unknown.

Provenance

The amphora's recorded history begins in London. On 11 November 1926 Sotheby & Co. sold it as lot 23: "A Diota, tapering oviform with broad shoulders, two handles on the body, decorated in red and black, on the body horizontal lines, on the shoulders a broad band of lotus flowers above a narrow band of guilloche, and beneath, line and diced ornament, on the neck winged diced lozenges front and back, and lotus flowers above the handles at the sides, 27 in. high; Kition fabric; c. 8th Cent. B.C." Plate III of the catalogue shows it beside lot 44, a second amphora of the same height [5]. "Kition fabric" was the cataloguer's label for painted Iron Age pottery in the Sotheby's sales of June to November 1926, and gives no find-spot.

Lot 23 belonged to "A Collection of Cypriot Antiquities", the first 147 lots of the sale, for which the catalogue names no owner. The printed list of prices and buyers bound into the Metropolitan Museum of Art's copy gives the price as £3 5s and the buyer as Zachariades, who took fifty-one lots of the collection, among them its four large two-handled amphorae, lot 44 included [5]. He was probably Zenon John Zachariades (c. 1876–1961), a Cypriot who by 1931 was an importer of Cypriot tobacco in the City of London [11, 12].

The collection had a history that the catalogue does not mention. Of its 147 lots, 133 had been offered at Sotheby's earlier in 1926: in the property of Mr. M. M. Petrakides on 22 March, and in two Cypriot collections sold without an owner's name on 21 June and 22–23 July [8, 9, 10]. The annotated copies of those sales mark 130 of them to two buyers, Thomas and Vagliano, and in November the same lots fetched about two-fifths of what those buyers had paid. The most probable explanation is that both names were used to buy lots in on the owner's behalf, and that the November collection was one Cypriot vendor's unsold stock, offered again with fourteen pieces added. Lot 23 is one of the fourteen. It is worded exactly like the big amphorae of the July sale, down to "Kition fabric; c. 8th Cent. B.C.", and probably came from the same stock [10].

The vendor was most probably M. M. Petrakides, the owner named in the March sale. A pottery trumpet from his property, sold in March as part of lot 100, in November as part of lot 65 and in 1932 as part of lot 94, is very probably the terracotta salpinx that Sir John Beazley gave to the Ashmolean Museum in 1937 (AN1937.158), listed in 1967 as "Once, Petrakides Collection" [8, 13]. Sotheby's sale books for 1926, which record each consignor, may yet confirm the name.

The amphora came up again at Sotheby's on 21 March 1932 as lot 85, "A Diota, of Kition fabric, tapering oviform, decorated in black and red … 27 in. high; c. 8th Century B.C.", in "The Property of a Gentleman. Collection of Cypriot Vases", lots 79–96 [7]. The group includes several of Zachariades's purchases of 1926, lot 44 among them as lot 79, so the Gentleman was probably Zachariades or a collector for whom he had bought. The printed list of buyers gives lot 85 to Hadbrook for £5, and Hadbrook also bought lots 79 and 80, so the two amphorae of Plate III were sold together a second time [7]. We know of no other record of the name, and the later history of lot 44 is unknown.

By 1974 the amphora belonged to Edward Varley Kayley (1900–1974), a collector chiefly of Chinese ceramics and paintings, who bought at local auctions and antique sales [14]; how it reached him is not recorded. After his death it stayed in his family until Bonhams sold it in London on 4 July 2024 as lot 139, "a large Cypriot Bichrome Ware amphora decorated with lotus flowers", with the provenance "Edward Varley Kayley (d.1974) collection; and thence by descent to the present owner" [6]. The London gallery ArtAncient then bought it and recognised it on Plate III of the 1926 catalogue, and it entered the Drakopoulos Collection in January 2025. You can trace the 1926 sale yourself in the catalogue's own pages, and read how the whole trail was traced.