Bronze strainer with loop handle

Bronze strainer with loop handle

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Strainers were part of the equipment for a symposium (drinking party), serving to strain the wine or additives mixed into it. This fine example has a delicately punched pinwheel pattern at the bottom of the bowl, vine leaves around the circumference of the lip on the exterior, and ducks' heads as finials for the handles.

Greek and Roman Art

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Bronze strainer with loop handleBronze strainer with loop handleBronze strainer with loop handleBronze strainer with loop handleBronze strainer with loop handle

The Museum's collection of Greek and Roman art comprises more than thirty thousand works ranging in date from the Neolithic period (ca. 4500 B.C.) to the time of the Roman emperor Constantine's conversion to Christianity in A.D. 312. It includes the art of many cultures and is among the most comprehensive in North America. The geographic regions represented are Greece and Italy, but not as delimited by modern political frontiers: Greek colonies were established around the Mediterranean basin and on the shores of the Black Sea, and Cyprus became increasingly Hellenized. For Roman art, the geographical limits coincide with the expansion of the Roman Empire. The department also exhibits the art of prehistoric Greece (Helladic, Cycladic, and Minoan) and pre-Roman art of Italic peoples, notably the Etruscans.