This lovely three-handled pithos with its fluid octopus design is typical of the Late Minoan period. Marine motifs, like the octopus, work well on a variety of vase shapes, because their shapes are simple, irregular and sinuous and translate well to two-dimensional representation.
This Marine Style is also characterised by horror vacui, namely the need to fill every available space with some ornamentation. Rockwork, coral, seaweed and shells fill the space between the octopus' tentacles.
There is a similar pithos found in the palace at Knossos, in the Heraklion Archaeological Museum in Heraklion in Crete and dates to ca 1450BCE. There is another in the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford.
Minoan pithos with octopus
dimensions
Height: 23cmmore about the octopus
This flexible and intelligent creature, relates to the psyche, to emotion and to intuition.
The Minoans depicted the octopus in their pottery, jewellery and frescoes, and were clearly intrigued by this silent, graceful, sinuous creature.
They depicted the octopus on their pottery and in their frescoes: the silent, graceful creature, unfurling its tentacles, moving slowly through an element that is itself constantly in motion. It makes camouflage to protect itself against predators and, if necessary, can detach a limb, which in turn will regenerate. Its ejection of black ink is designed to confuse, delude and deter.
about the pottery collection
They are all made in Greece in the workshop of the Lioulias family, with whom It's All Greek is proud to have been working since 2004.
The vases themselves are manufactured in Greece, the images are then applied by transfer, before being painted by hand.