3rd-4th century AD. A red earthenware vessel with applied decoration, probably for votive purposes and used as water or wine jar, a rare variety of the`Rheinish type' exhibiting the face and unusually the arms. See similar pottery in Museum of London, inventory numbers 61364, 18302, 21674, 21739, 7368, A1739. 519 grams total, 22cm with stand (8 1/2"). From a collection formed in London before 1990. Exuberant folk-decoration of Roman cooking and daily life pottery comprised coarsely modelled faces on water-jars and other vessels, many of them probably made in Britain and on the Rhine provinces, as confirmed by the archaeological finds. Face pots are found in most cultures; symbolic, naturalistic, crude or refined, and probably these provincial Roman examples are nothing more than humorous touches to simple kitchen jars. Storage flagons, decorated like our specimen, were used mainly for water or wine. Sometimes they were decorated with a bearded face on a largish rotund shape. Many similar designs would have been made all over the Empire. It is also interesting to note that facepots have found in cemetery areas or in sacred places such as the Walbrook stream, close to London’s temple of Mithras.