Alba Regia. Annales Musei Stephani Regis. – Alba Regia. Az István Király Múzeum Évkönyve. 25. – Szent István Király Múzeum közleményei: C sorozat (1995)

Rei Cretariae Romanae Fautorum Acta XXXIV - Kenrick, Pm: Corpus vasorum Arretinorum: the third Generation. p. 281–282.

Alba Regia, XXV, 1994 P. M. KENRICK CORPUS VASORUM ARRETINORUM: THE THIRD GENERATION Students of Italian terra sigillata pottery will not need to be reminded that one of the essential tools of their study is the Corpus Vasorum Arretinorum, a. catalogue of potters' signatures which was compiled by August Oxé during the early part of this century (OxÉ COMFORT, 1968). The publication is an impressive one, listing some 25,000 instances of stamped sherds and reproducing many of them in facsimile. However, those who have troubled to read the preface to this work will know that the road to eventual publication was not an easy one. Oxé died in 1943 without prospect of its realization, and the cause was taken up after the Second World War by Professor Howard Comfort, the beloved Late Honorary President of this Society, who eventually succeeded in bringing the manuscript into print in 1968. Professor Comfort made an early and wise decision not to add to О x é's Corpus, but to record any additional material that became known to him for a projected supplement. There is therefore now a body of material available for inclusion which spans some fifty years of excavation and publication since О x é's lists were compiled. The potential of this material for study is in many instances far greater than that included in the original catalogue, for О x é's records drew upon publications which were often sketchy in the information they provided about the vessels on which stamps had been recorded, and upon museum collections which often had little to tell about findspots. The new material, on the other hand, is derived to a far greater extent from scientifically conducted excavations supported by well-illustrated and carefully analysed publication. An additional tool, not available to О x é, is that of clay analysis, which has now been extensively applied and has often enabled a more rigorous association to be established between individual vessels and their sources of manufacture. At the meeting of the RCRF at Worms in 1986 Professor Comfort proposed the establishment of a new typology for the forms of Italian Sigillata, in order to provide a more satisfactory source of reference for shapes than had been available to Oxé. The resulting Conspectus (1990), a collaborative venture by a number of Fautores, was published at our last meeting, at Pavia in 1990. At the Pavia meeting, I was asked if I had ever considered taking over the work on the stamps in view of Professor С о m f о r t's advancing years. I replied truthfully that I had not, but the seed was sown and after extensive discussions I proposed a form in which this might be done, within the terms of a five-year, full-time research project. This idea was greeted enthusiastically by Professor Comfort, and it is now my privilege and pleasure to announce that the project is to begin forthwith. Behind this announcement lie two years of correspondence and appeals for funds. In this I have received support from many of the Fautores, and above all from Professor Elisabeth Ettlinger in Zürich and Professor Siegmar von.Schnurbein in Frankfurt: to them and to all those who have written in support of the project, I wish to express my heartfelt thanks. I wish also to express my thanks to Dr. J. J. С о u 1

1 о n , Director of the Institute of Archaeology at the University of Oxford and to his colleagues: they saw immediately the need for such a project to have an institutional base, and were quick to offer it. Dr. С о u 1

1 о n has since then coped tirelessly with the volume of correspondence that has passed through his hands as a result. In January 1991 I visited Professor Comfort at his home and he handed over to me all of his notes. I estimate that he had approximately 12,000 signatures recorded for the supplement, and that this had been achieved by transcribing them from roughly one quarter of the titles in his bibliographic index. This indicates a body of material in the region of 50,000 signatures which is accessible 281