ABSTRACT
If one may speak about trademarks in the pre-modern period at all, then it might be said that white-bodied polychrome ceramics was the only trademark of artisan production in Preslav, the capital of the First Bulgarian Empire. The reason to set this local trademark within the much broader context of Middle Byzantine trade is well known: Constantinople is thought to have been the most probable source for the introduction of polychrome ceramics in Preslav in the late 9th century, thus providing an excellent example of exchange of technologies in the field of ceramic production.1 In this respect, polychrome ceramics produced and used in Preslav undoubtedly deserve the enduring and serious scholarly interest paid to them for almost a century. As a result, a number of important questions have been answered:
The centres of production have been localized within the walls of Preslav (the Palace Monastery and the complex of the Round
1 For the evolution in the interpretation of the interrelationship between the white-bodied polychrome ceramic production in Constantinople and in Preslav, see J. Strzygowski, Die Baukunst des Armenien und Europa, vol. 2 (Vienna, 1918), 569; B. Filov, Starobălgarskoto izkustvo [The Old Bulgarian Art] (Sofia, 1924), 15-16; D.T. Rice, Byzantine Glazed Pottery (Oxford, 1930), 19, 82; K. Miatev, Die Keramik von Preslav (Sofia, 1936), 115-40; N. Mavrodinov, Starobălgarskoto izkustvo [Early Bulgarian Art] (Sofia, 1959), 252; S. Vaklinov, Formirane na starobălgarskata kultura, VI-XI v. [Formation of Early Bulgarian culture, 6th-11th c.) (Sofia, 1977), 19-27; C. Vogt and A. Bouquillon, ‘Technologie des plaques murales décorés de Preslav et de Constantinople (IXe-XIe siècles)’, CahArch 44 (1996), 105-16; M. Mundell Mango, ‘Polychrome tiles found at Istanbul: typology, chronology, and function’, in S.E.J. Gerstel and J.A. Lauffenburger, eds., A Lost Art Rediscovered: the architectural ceramics of Byzantium (Baltimore, 2001), 39.
