CULTURE / REGION OF ORIGIN: Cyprus.
DATE: Circa 1,400 BCE (Late Bronze Age / Late Cypriot II Period).
DIMENSIONS: 14.5 cm. (5.7 in.) tall.

DESCRIPTION:A Cypriot Base Ring Ware flask, with a piriform body and strap handle. The vessel is made from fine grained dark brown clay, smoothed and polished, with blackening on one side of the vessel, possibly from misfiring. The vessel rests on a small circular pad base from which the body rises and expands to a broad shoulder before constricting to a tall, narrow neck, ending with an outward flaring lip. The strap handle is flat in section and rises from the shoulder to the upper neck and continues around the neck to form a beveled raised ring. There is a small chip to the pad base; otherwise the vessel is intact.

PROVENANCE: Formerly in the private English collection of Mr. Peter Negus, formed between the 1920s and 2007 from various sources in the UK and abroad.

PUBLISHED: Bonhams, ANTIQUITIES, 26 October, 2007, London Page 140, illustrated in color.

COMPARISONS: Paul Astrom, Corpus of Cypriot Antiquities 2, The Cypriot Collection of the Museum of Art and Archaeology, University of Missouri - Columbia, Gothenburg, 1979, Numbers 30 and 31 for comparable examples.