The Evolution of Functional Pottery

That's the bowl. But, of course, you knew that already from reading my previous posts.

It's sitting on display in he Metropolitan Museum of Art. This is the only picture of it that I can find: the shiny internal reflection is pretty awesome, but it's hard to tell if the bowl shape is actually parabolic. The legs are interesting: what are those slots?

I won't learn anything more about this bowl until I get back to New York.

But there are still avenues to explore. There should be precursor bowls, i.e. more primitive versions of this design. Of course, I have no idea why there are bulbous legs, or weird slots, but they are probably there for a reason. So I go searching for variations on this design in Mayan pottery. A number of possible hits turn up. Actually, because I am Bayesian, I also search Middle Eastern, Indian, Chinese, Roman, and Greek pottery: nothing like this appears. Good.

The annoying thing is that most of the hits are "rattle bowls": the hollow legs contain pottery beads that, well, rattle when the item is shaken. About half the candidates are possible telescope elements, but the other half are clearly household pots with rattle legs. Even assuming a functional design element transferred to an everyday item (with loss of function,) the whole rattling telescope bowl thing is looking to be a bit of a stretch.

An example of a functional design element making its way to an everyday item with total loss of function: