Sometimes I really feel the call to hold something ancient in my hands, even if just for a few moments--and this, an ancient Etruscan black clay pottery shard from around 500 BCE, spoke loudly and directly to me across all those years with this little about-to-leap rabbit on its rim! How to resist a bunny, especially one thousands of years old??? I purchased it from a favorite shop in Vermont--a beautifully curated and arranged sprawling trove of treasures--and know it came from an old private collection in the U.S.

This burnished black clay fragment, showing gray on the sides, is an example of Bucchero, often considered the signature ceramic of the Etruscans--indigenous, pre-Roman people of the Italian peninsula. The term bucchero derives from the Spanish term búcaro (Portuguese: pucaro), meaning either a ceramic jar or a type of aromatic clay. The main period of bucchero production and use stretches from the seventh to the fifth centuries BCE and included tablewares made mostly for elite consumption. 

Approx 3" t x 1 1/4" w. 3 1/2" t on custom stand, included. Better in person, just wonderful. Rich black surface, with some burnishing/surface loss along top edge and some surface cracking around the bunny (shot with several times magnification; to the eye, reads crisp and clear.)