Show here your Roman soldier impression

[tlclark]

"This message may be monitored by George W. Bush for the purposes of national security and quality control"ROFLMAIO (rolling on the floor laughing my Italian ass off)

Thanks, y'know the burn is that I've been using this tagline for a week or so now, and just the other night Dave Lettermen uses the same joke!

Dave must be lurking the RAT boards! (It's the only logical explanation):wink:

"arrentine"
I thought I could be wrong, soI checked the spelling on it in my books, and it's Arretine, no "n"-after pieces found in Arezzo, northern Italy.

Oops! My bad. I never could spel.

Alternately, I would make a REALLY REALLY good copy that was 10% larger, and take a cast of IT, and then use the mold with my regular clay, which is very smooth and finely grained.

I'll keep my eyes out for one.

With LEATHER though, my guess is that WOOD molds were used, much as they are today in the making of a good saddle.

VERY interesting. Thanks for the tip.

Please, DO send me a picture-I can copy just about anything in clay, and if you're really interested, I'd give it a try.

The Byzantine stuff is very similar to the stuff you have except it has blue-green and brown glazed with an incised design (usually birds, though not certain why birds were so popular)

Here's a crappy black and white bird incised bowl I just googled.

http://www.astromeditions.com/images/91-7081-160-1B.jpg

And here are some of my crappy pics of pilgrimage flasks from the Byzantine Museum in Athens.



(And some links to avoid the 3 images rule)
http://astro.temple.edu/~tlclark/pictur ... flask2.jpg
http://astro.temple.edu/~tlclark/pictur ... flask3.jpg

These range in size from about 2-5 inches in diameter. Most are made from lead, but a large amount are in ceramic, like these. They are decorated with images of the saint from which shrine they came, or with generic images of the crucifixion or the orant virgin, crosses or holy mongrams of the virgin, etc, or sometimes protective prayers. They all have the two 'handles' up top that are really too small to be handles, but instead were used to tie a rope or thong to so that they would hang over the neck. They held oil that had been poured over the relics of the saint and imparted some of the holy odor or myron of the relic to the oil, which in description, alternately smells like honey, flowers or incense. They were worn for protection by all classes. The beaded border is also common. Most are molded and mass produced, but a few are custom made and some are even painted.

These other two are some examples of byz. pottery. Great linear designs in incised and painted on glazes.

http://astro.temple.edu/~tlclark/pictur ... ottery.jpg
http://astro.temple.edu/~tlclark/pictur ... ttery2.jpg

Love the spiral patterns.
Anyway, hope this is inspiration.

Thanks again!!

Update: Darn! I can't get the last two links to come up, but I can see them in my ftp utility so I don't know why they aren't working. I will see if I can fix them later.

Travis