page_title: Cavetto
section_title: Vessels
hierarchical_section_title: Cavetto / Vessels
caption_attribution_description: Exhibit in the Sackler Museum, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA. The museum permitted photography of this artwork without restriction. This artwork is in the public domain because the artist died more than 70 years ago.
context_page_description: A cavetto is a concave moulding with a regular curved profile that is part of a circle, widely used in architecture as well as furniture, picture frames, metalwork and other decorative arts. In describing vessels and similar shapes in pottery, metalwork and related fields, "cavetto" may be used of a variety of concave curves running round objects. The word comes from Italian, as a diminutive of cave, from the Latin for "hollow". A vernacular alternative is "cove", most often used where interior walls curve at the top to make a transition to the roof, or for "upside down" cavettos at the bases of elements.
  The cavetto moulding is the opposite of the convex, bulging, ovolo, which is equally common in the tradition of Western classical architecture. Both bring the surface forward, and are often combined with other elements of moulding. Usually they include a curve through about a quarter-circle. A concave moulding of about a full semi-circle is known as a "scotia".
  Only a minor element of decoration in classical architecture, the prominent cavetto cornice is a common feature of the ancient architecture of Egypt and the Ancient Near East.
context_section_description: In plates and other flattish shapes, cavetto is used for the curving area linking the base and the rim. This is the case whether the rim is a broad flat surface (typical 20th century Western plate), or merely the edge of the cavetto (typical modern cereal bowl).  Normally the term refers to the top surface of the vessel; if the underside is meant (where the curve is now convex), that may be described as "under the cavetto", "under-cavetto" and so forth. 
  The cavetto is very often left undecorated, but may have decoration of a different sort from the middle or a flat rim, and the term is typically used when it is necessary to describe this.  In complicated pottery shapes, where the normal vocabulary of mouldings is appropriate, cavetto may be used in that sense for any concave curving section. 
  In the terminology of archaeology, especially relating to pottery (and generally not used of pottery after antiquity, or outside archaeology), a cavetto zone or cavetto is a "sharp concavity encircling the body of a vessel", and also a "deep but narrow neck", both used in relation to mainly upright vessels for storing or cooking food.
caption: Ming dynasty dish in blue and white porcelain. The cavetto is demarcated by pairs of thin blue lines, and has running scroll decoration, different to that on either side of it in the flat middle and rim.
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