Dish with a Falcon

This dish, together with Walters 48.2291 and 48.2292, was discovered in the shipwreck of a large Byzantine trading vessel near Alonissos in the Aegean Sea. The ship's cargo consisted of some 1,500 pieces of tableware, most decorated with drawings incised into a thin layer of fine white clay. This technique, now called "sgraffito," was brought to Byzantium from the Islamic East. It was from the Near East, too, that the Byzantine nobility learned to hunt with specially trained falcons like the one seen here. Such sports were reserved for the wealthy, who normally ate from silver plates, but they would have been familiar also to the less affluent users of clay tableware. Because of their association with the rich and powerful, hunting animals were believed to bring good fortune. Thus, a Byzantine dream book promises its readers that "if you dream that you caught a hawk, you will have wealth in your house."

Provenance

Provenance (from the French provenir, 'to come from/forth') is the chronology of the ownership, custody, or location of a historical object.

[Found underwater in the Northern Sporades by Bruno Löffel of Vienna, Austria, 1967]; Walters Art Museum, 1967, by purchase.