The ceramic bowls
There are still seven ceramic bowls (four on the façade, three in the eastern wall, figs. 1-4) in the church of San Nicola di Trullas. These are large ceramic bowls with a glass enamel surface placed in the wall for purely decorative reasons (often lost and where only the empty housing remains to indicate the presence in the past) that recent studies have referred to being of Islamic make, identifying the origin as eastern Sicily and dating back to the 11th century. Although it cannot be proved right now, it is possible that these ceramic bowls reached Sardinia via Pisa merchants, but it is also likely that they were directly imported from Sicily.
Bibliografia
- R. DELOGU, L’architettura del medioevo in Sardegna, Roma, 1953.
- M. HOBART, Sardinian medieval churches and their bacini: architecture embedded with archeology, New York University Ph.D. 2006 dissertation, Ann Arbor, MI, 2006.
- M. HOBART, Merchants, monks, and medieval Sardinian architecture, in Studies in the archaeology of the medieval Mediterranean, Leiden, 2010, pp. 93-114.
- M. HOBART, F. PORCELLA, Bacini ceramici in Sardegna, in I bacini murati medievali. Problemi e stato della ricerca, atti del XXVI Convegno Internazionale della Ceramica, (Albisola, 28 - 30 maggio 1993), Centro Ligure per la Storia della Ceramica, Albisola, 1996. pp. 139-160.