Feeders, also known as feeding cups or feeding bottles, have been produced throughout history. Translated from Greek, a feeder is a bombylios. It is a shape characterised by its spout. Small terracotta figurines showing feeders in use demonstrate that they were used to feed young children, including during weaning. Some feeders have indentations, from small teeth, around their spouts, and others have inscriptions like ‘mamo (breast)’ and ‘drink, don’t drop’, which confirm the vessels were used for feeding infants. Feeders are often found with infants in their burials.

The Shefton feeder (inventory number 123) was manufactured in Corinth, in the Peloponnese in Greece, in the 6th century BC. The feeder is made from clay. It would have been thrown on a potter’s wheel before the handle and spout were added. Then it would have been decorated before being fired in a kiln. Some of the key features of the feeder are: the spout, a sieve integrated into the top, and two handles (one vertical and one horizontal).

The Shefton feeder is decorated in a Geometric style, with black and brown pigments. Geometric styles were often abstract, especially on smaller vessels like feeders: they use different repeated patterns made up of a range of linear components.

On the Shefton feeder meander patterns decorate the top and sides of the vessel. In the decorative band on the top of the feeder there is a swastika included in the pattern next to the handle. The swastika is an ancient symbol used by many cultures. In Greece it appeared on painted pottery where it was associated with animals and often used to demonstrate movement. It did not originally have any of the negative associations that it does today, since the Nazis used it as their symbol in World War II.

Feeders can be more or less elaborately decorated than the Shefton feeder (inventory number 123). Other feeders in the Shefton Collection (inventory numbers 705 and 165) are plain black-glazed examples: it is notable that they both have spouts, but they do not have the integrated sieve. Other feeders are more elaborate: some are decorated with red-figure scenes showing children, like the Shefton chous, whilst others are moulded in the form of animals, including mice and pigs, or fruits, like pomegranates. Feeders modelled as animals or other objects seem to have been more common in Italy and Sicily, rather than in Greece.

Some feeders have been mistakenly classified as lamp fillers, called ‘guttae’, because of their spouts. This demonstrates how interpretations that focus on adults’ use of objects are problematic: feeders demonstrate that material culture could be made specifically for children in antiquity, and failing to recognise that results in misinterpretation of objects and their significance. That said, feeders may not have only been used for children, though children were the primary consumers for them. In more recent history we have record of them also being used for ill or disabled adults, as medicine cups.

In terms of shining light on children in antiquity, feeders confirm the existence of objects made primarily for children and infants. They also highlight the importance of classifying and interpreting objects with a perspective that considers non-adult use of objects in the past, to avoid misinterpretation of those objects in the present.

Meander pattern

Feeding cup, Shefton Collection 705

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