CHAPTER FIFTY THREE

THE MEANINGS OF BUCCHERO

Richard Daniel De Puma

WHAT IS BUCCHERO?

B

ucchero is the name we apply to a specifi c type of black pottery produced extensively

by the Etruscans. It is sometimes called a “national” pottery or, unfairly, their “only

independent invention.”^1 The name comes from the Spanish búcaro fi rst applied to South

American pottery made from pungent black clay and later imitated by Portuguese potters

who called it pocaro.^2 Discoveries of black Etruscan pottery reminded early excavators of

this New World búcaro and so an Italian variant of the name, bucchero, stuck. The name has

remained popular despite its having no direct connection whatsoever to the Etruscans.

We have no idea what they called this kind of pottery. The modern study of bucchero is

complex and cannot be examined closely here.^3

Many scholars believe that the earliest bucchero evolved slowly from a type of impasto

pottery made by the latest potters of the Villanovan culture, in other words by the people

who became the Etruscans. Other experts have noted the strong similarities between

certain metallic (and ivory) shapes that may have infl uenced the development of early

bucchero. A kind of proto-bucchero is called buccheroid impasto by archaeologists. In

buccheroid impasto, vessels are fi red in a partial reduction atmosphere creating a black or

blackish-brown surface but a lighter core. These vessels are mostly hand-built of poorly

levigated clay. The earliest true bucchero appears to have been developed at ancient

workshops in and around Caere (modern Cerveteri) in Southern Etruria, about 25 miles

north-west of Rome. This material dates to circa 675 bc, is thrown on the wheel and is

quite refi ned.^4 Shapes have thin walls, elegant profi les and often fi nely impressed, incised

or modeled decoration. Some of these earliest examples are clearly derived from Greek

shapes and may have been intended to imitate metallic originals. For example, very fi ne

kotylai are precisely the shape of Protocorinthian kotylai and even have similar decorative

ray motifs incised (rather than painted) around the base (Fig. 53.1, a–c). Some pieces,

it is reported, were found with a silver coating still adhering to their outer surfaces to

enhance the imitation of expensive metal originals (Fig. 53.1, b).^5 The high metallic

sheen, so prevalent in the earliest bucchero, is probably a combination of burnishing and

the application of a thin organic wash before fi ring.^6 The distinctive radiating patterns