Grand Tour Alabaster Amphora Urn

The Grand Tour produced an entire industry of objects like this one carved in alabaster by Italian craftsmen, most of them working out of Volterra, the Tuscan hill town that had been quarrying and shaping the stone since the Etruscans. The alabaster trade in Volterra reached its peak between 1850 and 1870, when workshops turned out neoclassical forms — urns, amphorae, tazzas — for the English and Continental travelers who wanted to carry antiquity home with them. 

This example is a double-handled amphora, the body fluted from shoulder to foot in wide, rounded lobes, the neck narrowing to a flared rim, the handles formed as simple open loops. The alabaster is the characteristic creamy white of the period, threaded with faint grey veining where the stone shifts in density.

Style: Neoclassical / Grand Tour
Materials: Carved alabaster
Place of Origin: Italy, likely Volterra
Period: 19th c.