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DÁGI, MARIANNA: 'Tinkers' and 'Patchers': Some Notes on the Ancient Repairs of Greek Vases

One of the common and widespread repairing methods was the attachment of fragments of the broken vase with staples

7 without any channel carved into the vase. In this case the fixing material was put on the surface, so there was visible evidence of damaging and mending on the vase.

8 The stamped bucchero vase fragment in the Collection of Greek and Roman Antiquities (no. 4) bears traces of the use of this method, and the Megarian bowl made some 400 years later (no. 16) was mended similarly. In the latter the vertical parts of the lead staples are preserved in the holes. The other common method is the mending by means of channels and staples. The fixing material was countersunk into the channel carved in the vase, and it was painted similarly to the colour of the surface in order to disguise the repair. In the Collection of Greek and Roman Antiquities three handles are fixed to the body of the vase with this technique: an Etruscan black-figure kyathos dated between 500 and 475 BC (no. 5), an Athenian red-figure bell-krater made in the early 4

th century (no. 12) and a Campanian red-figure bell-krater made around 350-300 (no. 14). In the drill holes of the latter there are still some bits of lead. When reattaching the broken foot to the kylikes, it was not an uncommon technique to use a pin threaded through a hole, which was drilled through the centre of the tondo. The visible end of the pin was countersunk slightly into the surface and bradded, and the other end facing to the hollow interior of the stem was also bradded or bended. This method also made the repairing relatively unobtrusive. Sometimes the repairing of the foot of the vessels (especially of the kylikes) required special solutions, depending on where it was broken, or on how the important the object was considered for aesthetic reasons. In these cases also a pin or staple holds the broken pieces together, but to make the repair more solid some other kind of fixing was necessary. For example, the foot of a kylix painted by Oinesimos was almost unnoticeably reattached to the cup in such a way that a bronze rivet was threaded through a hole, which was drilled into the tondo and was connected to a bronze sleeve placed in the hollow of the stem.

9 In the case of another kylix, a bronze sheet soldered to a bronze disc was put into the interior of the foot, fitting perfectly into the hollow, and was fixed to the stem by a bronze pin above the break.

10 7 It seems that staples and not wires were used for the repair of vases. The technique is so well approved that even the staple forms are constant throughout the ages - just compare the aforementioned early Cycladic fragment from Kastri and an amphora attributed to the circle of the Dinos Painter found in Attica (Piraeus Museum, inv. no. 7341; XTCú'v)(aou£p, T., Ta uvn^ieia Kai TO ApxaioXoyiKO Movoeto rov Tleipaia, Athens 1998, 39, fig. 5). On repaired vases known to me there are two types of staples. One has a flat, rectangular form; the other is arched with a vertically or diagonally cut ending. Flat type of lead staples were found in Syros from the early Cycladic II period (Athens, National Archaeological Museum, inv. no. 11311; ten intact and fragmented pieces). 8 E.g. a column krater by the Harrow Painter from a grave of the Sabucina necropolis, near Caltanisetta. See Gempeler, R.D., ArttK 12 (1969) 16-21. 9 Museo di Villa Giulia, inv. no. 121110: see Elston 1990, 53-55, figs. 3-4 (previously in the J. Paul Getty Museum, inv. no. 83.AE.362). It is noteworthy that the fracture is immediately at the join of the foot and the cup of the kylix.