Pages: 739-763

This article is in Russian
The archaeological excavations in the Moscow Kremlin carried out in 2007 uncovered a collection of imported glazed ceramics (146 samples). This is the most numerous collection of all previous finds of such ceramics in the Kremlin over more than 100 years.
Sherds of vessels produced in the middle — second half of the 14th century in the Golden Horde towns in the Lower Volga region make almost half of this collection. Most of them are made of soſt white Qashan (quartz-frits) decorated with polychrome (black-and-blue, black/green-and-blue-and-turquoise) painting, oſten with addition of white slip. A very small group (about 5%) are sherds of red-clay ceramics with green transparent lead glaze without any decoration; these were manufactured in towns of the South-Eastern Crimea. Chinese celadons and blue-and-white faience make an unusually big group (1/5 of all finds), yet these vessels were represented only by small fragments found in 16th — 17th centuries layers. The Turkish faience (from Iznik) of the first half of the 16th century, which is a very rare find in Russia, make 13% of all finds. Including, sherds of vessels with red background, which are the first finds of this kind in Moscow and in Russia as a whole. The most enigmatic groups include sherds of imported plates without any decoration and bowls with brown decoration. These were likely produced in Asia Minor or in the Caucasus. Another type of vessels with white slip decoration were probably imported from North-Western Europe — Holland or Germany (a tripod vessel).

Keywords: Moscow Kremlin, Middle Ages, imported glazed pottery, classification, origin

Information about author:

Vladimir Koval (Moscow, Russian Federation). Candidate of Historical Sciences. Institute of Archaeology of the Russian Academy of Sciences. Dmitry Ulyanov St., 19, Moscow, 117036, Russian Federation
E-mail: [email protected]