"Arretine" Covered Bowl

E. F. Caldwell & Co. was an American interior decorating firm, among the foremost early designers of electric light fixtures. George Gough Booth was a dedicated customer of Caldwell & Co for many years. After furnishing his home, Cranbrook House, with lighting by Caldwell, he returned to their New York shop for additional lamps, side tables, and small decorative objects such as this ornate covered bowl. The classicizing relief decorations on the bowl depict winged figures playing the lyre and aulos, or double flute, separated by tripods and candlesticks. On the lid, men harvest grapes and crush them beneath their feet, illustrating the first stages of the wine-making process.

The bowl was marketed under the name “Arretine,” referencing a type of ancient Roman pottery, which was made in and around the town of Arretine, now Arezzo, Italy, from the first century BCE to the third century CE. Arretine ware was made from dark red clay, mold-formed or hand-decorated with low relief ornamentation. This Caldwell bowl’s decorative elements are based on surviving fragments of Arretine ware; the designer probably studied very similar examples held at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, or the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. The name “Perenn,” which appears on the sides of this bowl, is copied from those same fragments, which were created at the workshop of one of several craftsmen named “Perennius,” known to have worked at Arretine around the first century BCE.

The patinated bronze recalls the ruddy tone of the clay employed by the Arretine potters, while the relief designs are brightly gilded. The relatively humble status of the historic Arretine wares is inverted in this fine bowl, which invokes the name and emulates the design of Roman mass-produced pottery but is itself a luxury object intended for display rather than use.

George G. Booth and family displayed this bowl in rooms throughout the first floor of Cranbrook House. It appears in historic photographs in many locations, indicating a possible affinity for the object or a special appreciation of its form on the family's part.

Mariam Hale
2023-2025 Collections Fellow
Cranbrook Center for Collections and Research
January 2024