Casgliadau Arlein

Several sherds from a vessel. The ovolo is small, narrow and double-bordered, with a long tongue ending in a rosette tip, and no horizontal border beneath. The design is panelled, with narrow vertical panels of wavy lines enclosing a vertical row of small leaf tips, and main panels containing a leopard, a vine and an archer.

The leopard is close to O.1573, a signed Masclus type, but is not quite the same. O.1773 occurs on a Drag. 30 from Aislingen but is best illustrated by Knorr 1919, Taf, 52, 3. Masclus's leopard has its neck forming a right angle with the body, while ours forms an acute angle. There are also differences in the hind legs, and in the vine plant behind the animal: this was obviously a separate poincon, many details of which, such as the tendrils, would have been carried out freehand. Our leopard seems to be the same as the one illustrated on Knorr 1919, Taf. f and G, and on Oswald 1948, pl II, 2, though in the latter case, the type has been restored as O.1573. Confronting the leapard is an archer, probably as O.268, a widely used figure type. This combination of figures appears on Oswald and Price 1920, pl. X, 3 a Drag. 30 from Colchester, where the leopard again appears to be our type rather than that of Maclus. Though the vessel cannot be attributed to a particular potter, the parallels point to a Claudian or Neronian date.

Dr 30 is an approximately cylindrical decorated bowl (vase)