A buff earthenware jar with a round body on a hollow pedestal foot and a short everted rim. It's painted all over in red ochre with swirling concentric loops, like oversized fingerprints, which carry down onto the foot.
Ban Chiang is a village in northeast Thailand where a schoolboy's stumble in 1966 turned up a buried Bronze Age culture. Its graves held thousands of pots like this, and the swirling red-on-buff painted wares from the late period became the culture's signature. Each painter worked the loops freehand, so no two jars match.
Condition: Two cracks and a few patched areas to the side of the body.
