Bichrome Red Ware

Bichrome Red is the name Einar Gjerstad gave to Cypriot wheel-made pottery with a red slip painted in black and a supplementary white [1]. It sits beside Black-on-Red in the same way that Bichrome sits beside White Painted: Gjerstad divided the decorated pottery of the Iron Age into a "white" group painted on a light ground and a "red" group painted on a red ground, and Bichrome Red belongs to the second [1]. In Gjerstad's tomb counts the ware appears late in Cypro-Archaic I (later work places its start in Cypro-Geometric III), grows steadily through Cypro-Archaic II, and in the first half of the Cypro-Classical period is the commonest decorated ware in the tombs the Swedish Cyprus Expedition counted [1]. Among its most elaborate products are the figure-jugs of Marion, where a small clay woman on the shoulder holds a jug that acts as the spout.

The secondary literature on the class is thin. Most of what can be said about it still rests on Gjerstad's typology of 1948 and the tomb groups behind it, with Nicola Schreiber's 2003 study of Black-on-Red as the main later discussion. This entry follows that evidence and flags where it runs out.

Definition and identification

Gjerstad defined Bichrome Red I (IV) as wheel-made, with the clay and slip of the contemporary Black-on-Red II (IV), and ornaments "painted with black and supplementary white paint; occasionally red colour is used instead of white" [1]. Schreiber, working from Gjerstad, describes it as "similar in technique and decoration to BoR ware, red slip with black painted decoration, but with additional painted white lines, or sometimes dots, alongside the black paint" [2, p. 283]. The white is the diagnostic. A red-slipped pot with black decoration alone is Black-on-Red; the same pot with white bands, dots or strokes added is Bichrome Red.

The name invites confusion with Bichrome ware, and the two overlap in practice. Bichrome proper is painted in black and red on a light, often buff or white-slipped, surface. Bichrome Red keeps the red slip of Black-on-Red and adds white on top of it. Two complications blur the line. Gjerstad notes that the earliest class sometimes used red paint in place of white [1], which puts black and red on a red ground. And in Bichrome Red II (V) the slip sometimes fired black in the kiln, the white turned violet and the black decoration vanished into the darkened surface, producing what he called "a black-and-white variety" [1]. A 21.5 cm British Museum amphora from Amathus shows the problem in a single object: its buff clay is fired black on the surface, with a large white lattice painted between the handles, and the museum catalogues it under both "Bichrome V" and "Bichrome Red II" (British Museum 1894,1101.304; site record).

The white is also the most fragile part of the decoration. It is painted over the slip, and catalogue descriptions of Bichrome Red vessels record it as worn, as on a British Museum oinochoe whose white infill is "now mostly eroded" (see below). A pot that looks Black-on-Red in a photograph may once have been Bichrome Red, and attributions from images alone carry that risk.

Gjerstad's classes and dates

Gjerstad numbered his Iron Age wares twice: a class number within the ware, and in brackets the general "Type" of the whole ceramic horizon, so that Bichrome Red I (IV) is the first Bichrome Red class and belongs to the Type IV horizon alongside Black-on-Red II (IV) and Red Slip II (IV) [1]. He recognised four classes, running from Type IV to Type VII [1, pp. 73–76], and the Expedition's second volume of 1935 already illustrates finds of the ware [3, p. 35]. Each class is described in its own section below.

The absolute dates are Gjerstad's: Cypro-Archaic I c. 700–600 BC and Cypro-Archaic II c. 600–475 BC [1], Cypro-Classical I c. 475–400 BC and Cypro-Classical II c. 400–325 BC [1]. Swedish excavation finds now in the Medelhavsmuseet in Stockholm carry the same pairing of class and period: the museum records a small Bichrome Red II (V) jug from Marion Tomb 50 as Cypro-Archaic II and a 33.4 cm Bichrome Red III (VI) figure-jug from Marion Tomb 56 as Cypro-Classical I. Gjerstad also noted that by Cypro-Classical I B the Type V horizon had almost disappeared, and that its two surviving vases in his tombs of that phase were Bichrome Red [1].

Chronology and frequency

Gjerstad's statistics are the firmest thing known about the ware. Counting the pottery from the tombs he excavated and classified, he found no Bichrome Red before Cypro-Archaic I B [1]. From there its share of the total pottery climbs, peaks in Cypro-Archaic II B and Cypro-Classical I A, and then declines to almost nothing by the end of the Cypro-Classical period.

The figures come from Gjerstad's table [1, pp. 204–206]. Read together, the two columns show Bichrome Red taking over from its parent: Black-on-Red begins to decline in Cypro-Archaic I B, and Gjerstad describes it as "supplemented by its sister ware, Bichrome Red, which culminates in Cypro-Archaic II B and Cypro-Classic I A. During the latter period, it is commonest of all the decorated wares" [1]. By then decorated pottery as a whole was in retreat. In Cypro-Classical I A the decorated wares made up only 24.2 per cent of the tomb pottery, against 80.6 per cent in Cypro-Archaic I, while Plain White rose to an absolute majority by Cypro-Classical I B [1]. Bichrome Red was the leading decorated ware in a period that decorated less. Gjerstad himself warned that the statistics "are built upon material found in tombs" and that plain domestic wares are always more numerous in settlements [1].

The absolute dates are less secure than the sequence. Schreiber summarises Gjerstad's scheme (the first stage from the late 7th century BC, a peak at the end of the 6th and the start of the 5th, decline by about 400 BC) and then comments: "Again, these dates are probably too late" [2, pp. 283–284]. She has already argued for earlier dates than Gjerstad's for Black-on-Red, and she applies the same doubt to its sister ware. If she is right, Bichrome Red began somewhat earlier than Gjerstad allowed [2, p. 284]. Later work has moved the start back further. Joanna Smith notes that Bichrome Red, like Red Slip and Black-on-Red, has been shown to begin in Gjerstad's Type III rather than Type IV, that is, on the horizon that opens in Cypro-Geometric III [6, p. 224]. Current usage drops Gjerstad's brackets and lets the Roman numeral name the Type, so that Bichrome Red III now means a Type III piece, earlier than his Bichrome Red I (IV) [6, p. 224]. Readers of older catalogues should note that Gjerstad's Bichrome Red III (VI), used throughout this entry, is a different and much later class.

Shapes and decoration

Bichrome Red took over the shapes of the wares around it rather than inventing its own. Gjerstad's first class copies Black-on-Red II (IV) and Red Slip II (IV): sack-shaped handle-ridge jugs, globular jugs, spout-jugs, amphorae with horizontal shoulder handles, and an askos built as a trick vase [1]. Schreiber adds that some later Red Slip jug types were decorated in Bichrome Red and that mushroom-lip juglets in the ware imitate Phoenician shapes [2, p. 282]. The class therefore spans the full range of jugs, jars and bowls of the period, with small juglets at one end and large amphorae and kraters at the other.

The decoration follows the same pattern of borrowing. In the first class it is the concentric-circle and band repertoire of Black-on-Red, with white added as bands, dots and short strokes [1]. Bichrome Red II (V) is, in Gjerstad's words, "the most richly decorated of the Bichrome Red wares" [1]. It adds lotus flowers, rosettes and dotted stars in the supplementary colour, the tree ornament also common in Bichrome V, and animal subjects that Gjerstad attributed to the influence of Greek vase-painting: stags, oxen, a lion attacking a bull, sphinxes [1]. A black and white toothed border around the rim of jugs and plates is a frequent small feature. Bichrome Red III (VI) continues the scheme of White Painted VI and Black-on-Red IV (VI) in a richer form, with dotted stars and tree ornaments surviving on its earliest pieces [1]. Schreiber reads the increasingly elaborate decoration of the later classes as an attempt to compete with fine imported Attic wares [2, p. 284].

A British Museum oinochoe dated by the museum to the Cypro-Archaic period shows the repertoire at full size: 30.2 cm high, with a floral volute on the body opposite the handle drawn in black outline with white infill, flanked by vertical rows of concentric circles, and a shoulder frieze of rosettes built from black and white dots (British Museum 1876,0909.65; site record). A 39.5 cm krater in the same museum, catalogued as Bichrome Red II, carries panels of lotus flowers and concentric circles in red, black and white on a dull red slip (British Museum 1869,0604.51; site record).

Figure-jugs and the Marion Bird Style

The shapes Gjerstad treated as new to Bichrome Red II (V) are jugs with a bull's protome on the shoulder and jugs with a human figure holding a jug on the shoulder; rarer still are jugs whose neck ends in a human head, sometimes combined with a bull's protome [1]. The first class already had spout-jugs with human protomes [1], and the figure holding a jug continued into Bichrome Red III (VI) [1]. These are among the complex shapes of Iron Age Cyprus, and they are discussed further in the site's article on an anthropomorphic hydria.

The British Museum's jug 1919,1201.1 from Marion-Arsinoe is a securely classified example (British Museum record; site record). It stands 34 cm high: a wheel-made ovoid jug in red slip with black and white paint, onto which a handmade woman in a long robe has been attached. She holds a small pierced jug that acts as the vessel's spout. On each side of the shoulder a pair of black birds in silhouette stands between schematic tree branches. Alicia Dissinger's catalogue of Cypro-Archaic bird imagery lists it as Bichrome Red II (V), Cypro-Archaic II, from Polis-tis-Chrysokhou, and assigns it with several others to a "Marion Bird Style": birds with almond-shaped bodies on either side of the vessel, accompanied by tall plant motifs [4, p. 366]. Another jug of the group in the British Museum, 1887,0801.67, came from Tomb 84 of Necropolis II at Polis and is dated to about 500 BC [4, p. 366].

Painted figures were not limited to Marion. In 1967 a Cypro-Archaic tomb at the locality "Maraes" on the southern edge of Episkopi yielded large quantities of Bichrome Red I (IV), Black-on-Red II (IV) and Red Slip II (IV). Two of the Bichrome Red jugs carried figured decoration on the shoulder opposite the handle, painted in white. Vassos Karageorghis, reporting the find, remarked that this style was much favoured in the region of Kourion [5, p. 33].

Bichrome Red I

Bichrome Red I (IV) is Gjerstad's first class, the Bichrome Red of the Type IV horizon. In his tombs it appears in Cypro-Archaic I B, the later part of his c. 700–600 BC phase, where it already makes up 5.6 per cent of all the pottery [1, pp. 204–206]; the site's catalogue dates pieces of the class c. 750–600 BC, allowing for the earlier start argued by Schreiber [2, p. 284] and Smith [6, p. 224]. It has the clay and slip of Black-on-Red II (IV), and its decoration repeats that ware's bands and concentric circles in black, with white added as encircling bands, dots and short strokes. Occasionally red paint takes the place of the white [1, p. 73].

The shapes are those of the contemporary Type IV wares: bowls, jars, jugs, amphorae and askoi. Gjerstad identifies a sack-shaped jug with a ridge at the handle and a wide lip, a globular jug with concave neck and down-turned rim, and a jug with a tapering neck as Red Slip II (IV) types. Spout-jugs with human protomes are more biconical, one of them a trick jug on a short foot, and the askos on a low foot is a trick vase of the same shape as the Black-on-Red II (IV) askos [1, p. 73]. A British Museum rhyton belongs to this playful group: a spherical body on a tall splaying foot pierced underneath, a spout joined to the body through a head protome, and a basket handle, painted in black and a much-faded white (site record). A hemispherical bowl from Kourion shows the class at its plainest, with broad and narrow black bands and white that has faded almost away (site record). The Episkopi "Maraes" tomb of 1967 shows the class in quantity in the Kourion region [5, p. 33].

Class numbers and Type numbers are easily confused here. A British Museum juglet with a trefoil mouth, three concentric circles below the neck and white dots on a black band is labelled "Bichrome Red IV" but dated c. 750–600 BC (site record); the date and decoration fit Type IV, that is, Bichrome Red I (IV). See all Bichrome Red I (IV) in the catalogue.

Bichrome Red II

Bichrome Red II (V) belongs to Gjerstad's Type V and to Cypro-Archaic II, c. 600–475 BC, when the ware rose to 12.5 and then 16 per cent of the tomb pottery [1, pp. 204–206]. Its clay and slip are those of Black-on-Red III (V), and it includes the black-and-white variety in which the slip fired black and the white turned violet [1, p. 74]. Gjerstad's summary of the shapes is that "types are few, but the varieties are many" [1, p. 74]. A bowl with a raised rim and no handles is peculiar to the class, developed from a Red Slip II (IV) bowl. The jars are sharply biconical with a down-turned rim and two vertical handles on the shoulder; the juglets are biconical. New jug types have a tapering neck with a splayed rim, or a pinched rim with the handle rising above the mouth. The most characteristic new jugs carry a bull's protome or a figure holding a jug on the shoulder, and a rarer group has a human head on the neck. One amphora type, with erect horizontal shoulder handles and bridge handles, sits between jar and amphora [1, p. 74].

This is the most richly decorated class (see "Shapes and decoration" above). A wheel-made jar from Amathus in the British Museum carries three large plant motifs in white on each side over black on the red slip, the tree ornament of the class at large scale (site record). The Amathus amphora fired dark with a white lattice (site record) is the black-and-white variety, and the figure-jug from Marion described above is the class's best-known product. See all Bichrome Red II (V) in the catalogue.

Bichrome Red III

Bichrome Red III (VI) is the class of Type VI and Cypro-Classical I, c. 475–400 BC, the phase in which Bichrome Red was the commonest decorated ware in Gjerstad's tombs, at 16.7 per cent of the pottery in Cypro-Classical I A and 7.6 in I B [1, pp. 204–206]. Its clay and slip match Black-on-Red IV (VI) [1, p. 75], and Gjerstad notes that the decoration of that Black-on-Red class is itself mostly in the Bichrome Red technique [1, p. 72], so the two shade into each other.

The shapes are wide shallow bowls on a ring base with two suspension holes, convex-sided bowls on a low foot, and bowls with a down-turned flat rim and a horizontal handle; jars with rudimentary or horizontal shoulder handles; jugs with depressed bodies, among them globular jugs with a collar rim and a handle with knobs at the neck in imitation of metal rivets, plain or with a human figure on the shoulder, and pinched-rim jugs; and oval amphorae with concave neck and flaring rim [1, p. 75]. The earliest pieces keep the dotted stars and tree ornaments of the class before. Later ones, Gjerstad writes, "show the influence of the contemporary Attic ware in the palmette, myrtle, ivy leaf and kymation motifs", and the supplementary colours now carry the ornament, with black kept as a rule for the encircling bands and lines [1, pp. 75–76]. The Medelhavsmuseet's figure-jug from Marion Tomb 56 belongs here.

Gjerstad's Bichrome Red III (VI) should not be confused with the "Bichrome Red III" of current usage, which means a piece of Type III at the end of the Cypro-Geometric period [6, p. 224]. The site's catalogue has no object assigned to this class yet; the Bichrome Red III (VI) catalogue page will list them as they are classified.

Bichrome Red IV

Bichrome Red IV (VII), the last class, belongs to Type VII and Cypro-Classical II, c. 400–325 BC [1, p. 76]. By then the ware was fading: 5.7 per cent of the tomb pottery in Cypro-Classical II A and 0.9 in II B [1, pp. 204–206]. It is wheel-made, with a slip that is usually slightly lustrous or matt. The bowls are shallow and wide, with a drooping flat rim and horizontal handles, sometimes doubled, at the rim. The jugs have a concave or almost cylindrical neck and a handle from neck to shoulder, and come plain, with an animal protome, or with a female figure on the shoulder. Gjerstad gives the decoration the same characteristics as White Painted VII, Bichrome VII and Black-on-Red V (VII) [1, p. 76].

The figure-jug is the class's best-documented form. A British Museum fragment from Kourion, the neck and upper body of a jug, has a woman holding a pitcher attached as the spout, a very tall neck splaying to a trumpet-shaped rim, and a double-ribbed handle with clay rivets copied from metal vessels (site record). The Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge has a complete jug of the class, 32.5 cm high, given by the Cyprus Exploration Fund with no recorded provenance: on the shoulder opposite the handle sits a mould-made female figurine holding a jug, made, its cataloguers observe, from an old mould [7, no. 85]. See all Bichrome Red IV (VII) in the catalogue.

Distribution

The published contexts are Cypriot tombs. Marion (modern Polis-tis-Chrysokhou) is the best-represented findspot, because the Swedish Cyprus Expedition excavated its cemeteries: its report records, for example, a Bichrome Red II (V) jug from Marion Tomb 51 with a black wavy line on a white ground below the rim [3, p. 378]. The Episkopi tomb places the ware in the Kourion region in quantity by Cypro-Archaic I [5, p. 33], and the British Museum amphora extends it to Amathus.

Outside the island the ware is scarce. Schreiber states that "Bichrome Red pottery is, however, almost never found on the Levantine mainland" [2, p. 284]. The movement of the parent ware beyond the island is treated in the origins of Black-on-Red ware. Individual pieces did leave: the British Museum holds a Bichrome Red II oinochoe with concentric circles whose recorded findspot is Turkey (British Museum 1905,1206.5). A single object does not make a trade, and we know of no systematic study of Bichrome Red outside Cyprus.

The Drakopoulos amphorae

Two amphorae in the Alexis Drakopoulos collection belong to the class. The first (JAR-GE-004) is an ovoid amphora with a wide neck and two strap handles, covered in an orange-red slip. Concentric circles drawn with a multiple brush float on the red ground of the neck and between the handles on the shoulder, above a belt of black lines. A black band at the base of the neck is set with a row of small white dots, the one place where the third colour survives clearly. Red slip, black circle-style decoration and added white dots match Gjerstad's description of Bichrome Red I (IV), whose decoration repeats Black-on-Red II (IV) with white bands and dots added [1], and amphorae are among the shapes he lists for that class. The restraint of the scheme, isolated circles and a single dotted band with no floral or figured motifs, suits the first class better than the richly decorated second.

The identification also sets the amphora's date. On Gjerstad's evidence no Bichrome Red occurs before Cypro-Archaic I B [1], and the amphora is dated c. 700–480 BC, covering his first two classes. Schreiber's view that Gjerstad's dates are too late [2, p. 284] would move the start somewhat earlier, and Smith reports that the ware is now shown to begin in Type III, at the end of the Cypro-Geometric period [6, p. 224]. That earlier start does not change the reading of this amphora, whose circle-and-dot scheme matches Gjerstad's first class.

The second amphora (JAR-GE-008, 29 cm) has two upright loop handles on the shoulder and a red to orange slip, deepest on the lower body and fading to buff on the neck and shoulder. A black band marks the base of the neck, and between the handles large pale X-shaped crosses are laid over the red ground above a double black belt. It shows the white problem described above: the white is the least durable colour, and a row of white dots once recorded on its neck band can no longer be made out. Bichrome Red is the most likely reading, with Bichrome IV on a reddish ground as the alternative, a pairing that sits on the same boundary that Gjerstad's own "black-and-white variety" and the Amathus amphora already blur. Either reading places it in the Cypro-Archaic period, most likely Cypro-Archaic I.

Status of the class

Bichrome Red is a category defined by one technical choice, white paint added to a red-slipped surface, laid across shapes and motifs it shares with Black-on-Red, Red Slip and Bichrome. Its four classes follow Gjerstad's general Types IV to VII rather than any break in the ware itself. That makes it a useful label for sorting tomb groups and a weak one for identifying workshops, since, as far as we know, no study has yet separated Bichrome Red fabrics or production centres. The figures that make the class distinctive, the jug-holding women and the paired birds of the Marion Bird Style, belong to Cypro-Archaic II and early Cypro-Classical tombs, and it is in those tombs, excavated by the Swedish Cyprus Expedition and catalogued by Gjerstad, that the ware is still best understood. Pieces from older collections in the British Museum and elsewhere can usually be placed within that framework by class, though rarely by findspot.