Two connecting pieces forming a cylindrical shape, the lip of the mouth chipped. Painted with black and white diagonal stripes over most of the exterior surface. A band of black and white paint lining the rim, both inside and outside. The rest of the inside is unpainted.

This is a fragment of a container from a kernos, a type of pottery made from several small vessels attached to a central ring and used to hold offerings of foodstuffs or flowers. A complete example of similar design is in the Metropolitan Museum, New York. Vessels of this unusual type were made in Minoan Crete and the Cyclades. Kernoi have been excavated from several tombs on Melos.

Provenance

Excavated at Phylakopi, Melos, c. 1899; Thomas Dinham Atkinson (1864–1948), by whom bequeathed to Winchester College in 1948.