Glossary Pottery and vessels
Bands and lines
Also called: horizontal bands, encircling lines
Plain horizontal stripes painted or incised round a pot, the simplest decoration, counted as a motif when they are the main or only ornament.
Bands are stripes that run round the body, neck or rim of a vessel. They are painted in a single colour, or in two in the Bichrome wares, or cut into the surface as parallel incised lines, as on Combed Ware and many Early Bronze Age pots. On wheelmade vessels they were easy to apply by holding a brush against the turning pot.
Almost every painted Cypriot vessel has some bands, usually framing a more elaborate design on the shoulder, so in the catalogue the motif is recorded only when bands are the main or only decoration. See all banded objects in the catalogue.
Full entry: Motifs of Cypriot Pottery
Related terms
- Incised decoration
Lines or patterns cut into a surface with a sharp point; on pottery this is usually done before firing, while the clay is still soft.
- Ladder pattern
Paired parallel lines joined by short cross-strokes like the rungs of a ladder, the hallmark decoration of White Slip II bowls.
- Metopes and panels
Decoration divided into separate rectangular fields, each holding its own motif, as on an Archaic Bichrome amphora or skyphos.
Where it appears
- Clothing and Dress in Ancient Cyprus
- Base Ring Bull Vessels
- Base Ring Figurines (Astarte Type)
- Bulls and Cattle
- Cups
- Hittite Empire and Cyprus
- Jars and Pithoi
- Neighboring Cultures
- Strainers
- The Pottery of Ancient Cyprus
- Triple Crossing Lines
- Village Life in Late Bronze Age Cyprus
and 2 more compendium pages