Gallo-Roman Production Ware

By Jinny Whitehead

During a recent holiday in France, I visited the wonderful Gallo-
Roman Museum in Lyon. The first thing that strikes the visitor is
the supreme importance of clay and clay-related products to the very
structures and daily economic functionings of Roman society: whether
one thinks of building bricks, roof tiles, drainage tiles, floor tiles and
mosaics, storage jars, funerary urns, vessels for cooking, drinking and
eating, or ornaments and jewelry.

Established in 43 B.C., Lugdunum (Lyon) was located at the
navigable confluence of the Rhéne and Saéne rivers. Within a few
years of its founding, Lugdunum had become a highly important
production centre for stamped clay wares, a species of red-varnished
ceramics with scenery embossed in relief. Italian craftsmen established
workshops that churned out thousands of these vessels of quite
remarkable and consistent quality.

‘The variety of shapes, colours, and varnishes they display provides
graphic evidence that the potters of the period had perfectly mastered
the wide choice of clays and the different types of firing techniques then
employed in the wider Mediterranean world. The local production
ware was exported throughout the Roman West, and to the military
camps as far away as the Rhine and the Danube frontiers.

The accompanying photos illustrate the contemporary look of the
ceramic cups. What is particularly striking for the viewer is that the

basic design elements present in this good and serviceable pottery,

honest and outspoken in its clean lines and virtuous production values,
have remained remarkably constant over the past 2000 years.

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Discovery:

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CERAMICS EXCURST

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COLUMBIA Potters Guild of BC Newsletter « June 2010 9