Fish plate

A fish plate is a Greek pottery vessel used by western, Hellenistic Greeks during the fourth century BC. Although invented in fifth-century BC Athens, most of the corpus of surviving fish plates originate in Southern Italy, where fourth-century BC Greek settlers, called "Italiotes," manufactured them.

Etymology

The name "fish plate" comes from the usual decoration of these objects which includes various fish and other marine creatures. Fishes depicted include bream, perch, torpedo fish, tuna, flying fish, puffer fish, scorpion fish, squid, cuttlefish, octopus, scallop, clam, dentalia, murex, sea snail, shrimp, crab, dolphin, hippocamp, etc.

Form

The form of the plate was called a "pinax" or "pinakion", meaning "tablet," because of its flat shape. The fish plate's form was that of a dimpled disk elevated on a pedestal, in other words, round and flat with a small cup in the center of plate designed to hold oil or sauce. Its rim was turned down, and often bears a decorative border, either spiraling waves, Greek key and meander motifs, or a wreath of laurel leaves. A fish plate is almost always also elevated above table level by a pedestal foot. Plates of this form are known since Minoan times (Pre-Greek), but they were not decorated with fish until the end of the fifth century BC. For illustrations of the form of the vessel, see the external link "Fish Plate Form" at the end of this article.