The Russian word for pot “gorshok” comes from the Old Russian “grn” (“horn” — melting furnace). From the “Explanatory Dictionary” by Vladimir Ivanovich Dahl,

The museum’s collection includes a vessel with a wide flat bottom and rounded sides narrowing to the rim. The rim is slightly bent. The upper half of the vessel, approximately to the middle, is covered with a pattern of horizontal drawn wavy lines, relatively parallel to each other. The item was made on a potter’s wheel, which means it is a product of a craft workshop.

For many centuries in Russia, pots were the main kitchen vessels for cooking, and they were used by representatives of different social strata. In all the periods of its existence its shape remained the same, as it corresponded to the main purpose — cooking in a Russian oven, in which the pots were on the same level with burning wood and were heated not from below, as on an open hearth, but from the side.

There were many types of pots, varying in their purpose. This pot was probably intended for cooking soup or other liquid foods for a family of three or four people.

Such pots were purely utilitarian objects, so they were rarely covered with glaze or decorated with a pattern, and if it was present, it was the simplest one, as in the presented exhibit.