Toulon sur Allier
A Gallo-Roman pottery manufacturing center for white clay statuettes (Venus, mother goddesses, Mercury, Jupiter, Minerva; busts of men, women, and children; lions, bulls, rams, pigeons, a snake). The pottery also produced bowls of terra sigillata from molds made at Lezoux or Vichy workshops, as well as from molds made on the spot, all in an interesting rustic style. A number of the plain sigillata bowls are signed, and the backs of the statuette molds are frequently signed in a cursive script. The workshop also turned out bowls painted with a brush and sponge (like the terra sigillata, signed on the rim), as well as plates and ewers.
The period of greatest activity was the middle of the 2d c. A.D. Exports went to Normandy.
BIBLIOGRAPHYH. Vertet, “Découverte de poterie peinte à Toulon sur Allier,” Gallia 17,2 (1959) 216-23I; id., “Les Statuettes en terre cuite gallo-romaines,” Revue du Louvre (1963).
H. VERTET