Puteoli Fine-Ware Workshops
About
A huge cache of vessels and molds unearthed here in 1873-74 revealed a Bay of Naples workshop turning out glossy red-slip sigillata for export across the western Mediterranean. Puteoli was already the empire's busiest commercial harbor before Ostia eclipsed it, giving its potters a ready-made shipping network. Production drew on Apennine clay hauled in from as far as Salerno, feeding a fine-ware industry that ran alongside the port's glass and grain trades into Trajan's reign.
What happened here
The workshop runs as a production line. Clay is dug locally, weathered over winter, kneaded and thrown, or pressed into moulds for the decorated wares. Vessels are dried under cover, stamped with the potter's name, stacked in the kiln around a central flue and fired for days with the temperature judged by eye and by test pieces pulled from a port in the side. A big firing holds tens of thousands of pots and a bad one loses the lot. Wasters are dumped in heaps beside the works. Some workshops export across half the empire and their stamps turn up thousands of miles away. Fuel is the limit on everything, so kilns sit near woodland and move when it runs out.
Sources
Nearby
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