Jar

Earthenware jars of this shape, typically covered with an alkaline glaze colored brown, green, or turquoise, are characteristic products from Mesopotamia during the Parthian period of the first through third century BCE. The qualities Freer most admired were the subtle colors, textured surfaces, and iridescent decay of the glaze, which he felt resonated with the complex chromatic qualities of his American paintings, particularly those by James McNeill Whistler, Thomas Dewing, and Dwight Tryon.