Courtesy Nahman Avigad/The Jewish Quarter Excavations

The Lennox of Late Hellenistic pottery, terra sigillata ware possessed an elegant design and smooth, shiny quality that appealed to the affluent classes of the period. This decanter with a carinated, or sharply angled, body, considered one of the most beautiful of its kind, was restored to its original appearance from sherds found in the excavation of a first-century B.C.E. house in Jerusalem’s Jewish Quarter. The light colored areas are plaster reconstructions of missing parts of the vessel. The manufacture of terra sigillata ware, developed in the eastern Mediterranean about 200 B.C.E., eventually spread to Italy, Gaul and Germany.