Ceramics and Swantaurs

A favourite preoccupation of mine during the pandemic has been looking for images of Swantaurs, the weird in-between state where a man is transforming into a swan. The most well known man-to-swan isn’t really a man at all, but rather, Zeus/Jupiter transforming into a swan to rape Leda. The topic is fraught and sensitive for obvious reasons, which makes the hilarity of the swantaur images an occasionally difficult topic for discussion. And they are hilarious! So please excuse my flippancy at focusing on the artistic interpretations rather than the serious aspects of the topic.

For your amusement, I have uploaded my presentation about the appearance of Swantaurs on Renaissance Maiolica. The lovely Classics postgrads at the University of Otago hosted the Amphorae 2021 conference, and they gave me an opportunity to talk about something silly and fun. And yes, I managed to cut my “Hello, I’m Lauren” from the start of the video because I am oh-so-very impatient when it comes to video editing. I’ve also chopped the insightful and fun questions and discussion from the end of the video because my fellow conference-goers did not consent to be shared online (and I didn’t ask them because… impatience).