| Brief Description |
This pottery barrel flask is decorated in the White Painted I ware style that dates from the Cypro-Geometric I period, 1050 BC to 950 BC.
The flask is one of a large collection of ceramics from Cyprus, donated to the Museum by Dr George Sleight, who lived in Cyprus and worked as Principal of the Morphou Teachers College. Later he became first Assistant Director and then Director of Education in Cyprus. After his retirement in 1956, Dr Sleight became Education Minister for Sierra Leone where he remained until at least 1961.
The flask has a round base with a barrel-shaped body. There are nubbins at the centres on each side. The neck is concave, long and funnel-shaped. It has been rebuilt in plaster and is not the original. The handle extends from horizontal ridge around lower neck to the shoulder.
The flask is decorated with a buff matt slip and dark brown paint.
On both sides at the centres, are filled brown circles with a Maltese Cross in relief, surrounded by nine thin and one thick concentric circle. Set vertically around the body (one set either side of neck), are two sets of two concentric circles enclosing six thinner circles. On the shoulder at the front are two horizontal lines at the base of the neck and a hatched lozenge and triangle motif made up of intersecting x-shaped lines. At the rear, below the handle, are two intersecting parallel lines. There is a further thick band on the base of the neck and oblique and horizontal lines at the lower neck. A horizontal ridge around the neck is also painted. On the upper neck are one horizontal band and eight thin bands. The sides and base of handle are painted, and the top of handle picked out by zig-zag lines.
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