Description
Book SynopsisThousands of intact ceramic bowls and plates as well as fragments made in the medieval Byzantine empire survive to this day. Decorated with figural and non-figural imagery applied in a variety of techniques and adorned with colourful paints and glazes, the vessels can tell us much about those who owned them and those who looked at them. In addition to innumerable ceramic vessels, a handful of precious metal bowls and plates survive from the period. Together, these objects make up the art of dining in medieval Byzantium. This art of dining was effervescent, at turns irreverent and deadly serious, visually stunning and fun. It is suggestive of ways in which those viewing the objects used a quotidian and biologically necessary (f)act that of eating to reflect on their lives and deaths, their aspirations and their realities.
This book examines the ceramic and metal vessels in terms of the information offered on the foods eaten, the foods desired and their status; the spectacle o
Table of Contents
Introduction 1.A Taste for Novelty 2. The Theatre of Dining: Splendour and Performance 3. Word, Image and Intellect: Rhetoric and Display at Table 4. Bad Taste 5. Manly Men, Heroic Hunters 6. The Display of Triumph, or: How A Plate Can Make You Powerful. Conclusion.
