The Roskilde Jars ( da, Roskildekrukkerne) stand on the square outside the railway station in Roskilde on the Danish island of Zealand. The three huge jars are in height and together weigh about 24 tons. The jars are the work of the Danish abstract sculptor

Peter Brandes Peter Brandes (born 5 March 1944 in Assens, Denmark) is a Danish painter, sculptor, ceramic artist and photographer. Brandes' art is abstract and often in brown colours. He had his breakthrough as artist in the beginning of the 1980s. He ...

(born 1944). They were commissioned by Elsebeth Stryhn of Stryhns Leverpostej, a local meat paste company, and presented to the city in 1998 on the occasion of Roskilde's 1,000th anniversary. The jars stand in a shallow basin of water, in which they are reflected. The one closest to the station is inscribed with extracts from Henrik Norbrandt's poem ''Junker Kristoffer'', a local hero buried in Roskilde Cathedral in 1363. The colourful glazed jars (two in tones of blue, the third in bronze) are reminiscent of Ancient Greek

amphora An amphora (; grc, ἀμφορεύς, ''amphoreús''; English plural: amphorae or amphoras) is a type of container with a pointed bottom and characteristic shape and size which fit tightly (and therefore safely) against each other in storag ...

s. They have accounted for several world records in pottery manufacture. Consisting of several hundred sections fired up to 1,300 °C at the Tommerup ceramics factory on the island of Funen, they were assembled by two men who stacked the sections on top of each other.

References

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