General Information

Troodos Traditional Coil-Built Ware, produced from the late 19th century until the present, is a red-firing ware made using locally available clays by potters in pottery-producing villages in the Troodos Mountains region’s mountains and foothills. These include the small remote villages of Agios Dimitrios, Kaminaria, and Phini high in the mountains; and the larger village of Kornos in the foothills to the east of the region. Reacting to the accessibility of these villages as well as the needs of the local populations, the potters in the mountain villages serve a primarily rural clientele, while those in Kornos serve both urban and rural communities. 

Responding to local (mainly rural) demands, the shapes that make up this ware are largely utilitarian. They include jugs, juglets, jars, cooking pots, casseroles, pita plates, goat milking pots, incense burners, ashtrays, ovens, and flowerpots. Some decorated vessels are also produced, though these are mostly made in Kornos for its nearby urban clientele.

To manufacture this ware, potters combine hand modeling with coiling and scraping, using a lightweight, manual turntable. In an interrupted technique of manufacture, coils are added to increase the vessels’ height in stages, during which time the vessels are bound with string to support the wet clay as it dries. Once dry, the string is removed, excess clay is scraped away, and (if applicable for the shape) handles and a base are added. Potters incise simple patterns on the vessels’ shoulders and/or rims (rosettes, roulettes, or zigzags), reflecting the tools available to the potters as well as individual approaches to decoration. No glazes or paints are added. When leather-hard, the potters fire the vessels in community-shared kilns.

Reflecting a shift in the mid-20th century to pottery production being a woman-dominated field, as well as the introduction of modern pottery production methods, Troodos Traditional Coil-Built Ware is produced by only about two dozen people, mostly over 50 years of age and almost exclusively female. This ware is what survives of Cyprus’ traditional pottery production, though the once-dominant itinerant potters (who specialized in pithoi but also produced the full ceramic repertoire) are no longer active as of about 1960. Accompanying the continued production of this traditional ceramic ware, urban potters work in Cyprus’ major cities, using modern equipment and imported clays to create mold-impressed or wheel-thrown table wares – though these do not reflect local rural demands as do the vessels in the Troodos Traditional Coil-Built Ware group. However, the dwindling numbers of traditional potters in Cyprus accompany a shifting economic reality, in which traditional vessels are not considered worth their time-intensive manufacturing process as they once were.

Scholarship relating to this ware comes from Gloria London, who performed an ethnoarchaeological study of the traditional Cypriot potters in the Troodos Mountains region in 1986, with an update in 1998. The Penn Museum has in its collection a travelogue ("Cyprus 1969 Reel 51 of 65," Film Id F16-0394), filmed in Kornos by Watson Kintner on June 18, 1969, which documents a Kornos potter's manufacturing process (accessible at https://www.penn.museum/collections/videos/video/461).

For a ware tradition with a similar mode of production and shape series, see Golan Chalcolithic Rope-Decorated Storage Ware.

A red-firing, utilitarian, coil-built ware with simple incised and appliqué decoration around the shoulders and/or rims, absent of glazes and paints.

Kornos (Cyprus/Troodos mountains)

Phini (Cyprus/Troodos mountains)