Three amphoras constructed of ceramic through coil building amounting up to three feet in height, and eleven inches in diameter each. These were then laid out into a bed of sand between one and three inches in depth, and filled with cinnamon, black pepper, or star anise.

Historically vessels like these were waterproofed with pine tar, and used in maritime trade to safely transport perishable botanicals and liquid goods in and around the Mediterranean for over thousands of years.

I constructed these amphoras with two themes to explore, the first being my formal education into history, specifically the spice trade between India and Rome near the end of the empire in 476 CE as a consequence of my cultural/familial relationship with Indian spices, especially as my father pursued a career in food studies and we are Indian. This is because these spices are native to India, but were commonly used in Roman cooking and fragrances for the five hundred years it reigned.

The second theme was how our relationship with packing materials has changed through the centuries. How the inherited value of history and antiquity makes these three foot tall jars significantly more valuable than the spices they contain. While in the past these were little more then cardboard boxes, discarded if chipped or damaged like a torn box into large piles of shattered ceramic.