Pottery of ancient Greece

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Thanks to its hardy nature pottery bulks large in the archaeological record of ancient Greece, and because we have so much of it (some 100,000 vases are recorded in the Corpus vasorum antiquorum) it has exerted a disproportionately large influence on our understanding of that society. Little survives, for example, of ancient Greek painting except for what is found on the earthenware in everyday use, so we must trace the development of Greek art through its vestiges on a derivative art form. Nevertheless the shards of pots discarded or buried in the first millenium BC are still the best guide we have to the customary life and mind of the Greeks.

Contents 1 Uses of pottery in Ancient Greece 2 History of Ancient Greek pottery 3 Rediscovery and Scholarship 4 Types of Ancient Greek pottery 5 See also 6 External links

[edit] Uses of pottery in Ancient Greece

Ancient Greeks made pottery for everyday use, not for display; the trophies that were won at games, such as the Panathenaic amphorae (used for storage), are the exception. Most surviving pottery consists of drinking vessels such as amphorae, kraters (bowls for mixing wine and water), hydriae (water jars), libation bowls, jugs and cups. Painted funeral urns have also been found. Miniatures were also produced in large numbers, mainly for use as offerings at temples. In the Hellenistic period a wider range of pottery was produced, but most of it is of little artistic importance.

In earlier periods even quite small Greek city-states produced pottery for their own locale. These varied widely in style and standards. Distinctive pottery that ranks as art was produced on some of the Aegean islands, in Crete, and in the wealthy Greek colonies of southern Italy and Sicily. By the later Archaic and early Classical period, however, the two great commercial powers, Corinth and Athens, came to dominate. Their pottery was exported all over the Greek world, driving out the local varieties. Pots from Corinth and Athens are found as far afield as Spain and Ukraine, and are so common in Italy that they were first collected in the 18th century as "Etruscan vases". Many of these pots are mass-produced products of low quality. In fact, by the 5th century BC, pottery had become an industry and pottery painting ceased to be an important art form of ancient Greece.

[edit] History of Ancient Greek pottery

The history of Ancient Greek pottery is divided stylistically into periods:

• the Protogeometric from about 1050 BC;
• the Geometric from about 900 BC;
• the Late Geometric or Archaic from about 750 BC;
• the Black Figure from the early 7th century BC;
• the Red Figure from about 530 BC;
• and the White Ground from the early 5th century BC.

The range of colours which could be used on pots was restricted by the technology of firing: black, white, red, and yellow were the most common. In the three earlier periods, the pots were left their natural light colour, and were decorated with slip that turned black in the kiln.

The fully mature black-figure technique, with added red and white details and incising for outlines and details, originated in Corinth during the early 7th century BC and was introduced into Attica about a generation later; it flourished until the end of the 6th century BC. The red-figure technique, invented in about 530 BC, reversed this tradition, with the pots being painted black and the figures painted in red. Red-figure vases slowly replaced the black-figure style. Sometimes larger vessels were engraved as well as painted.

During the Protogeometric and Geometric periods, Greek pottery was decorated with abstract designs. In later periods, as the aesthetic shifted and the technical proficiency of potters improved, decorations took the form of human figures, usually representing the gods or the heroes of Greek history and mythology. Battle and hunting scenes were also popular, since they allowed the depiction of the horse, which the Greeks held in high esteem. In later periods erotic themes, both heterosexual and male homosexual, became common.

Greek pottery is frequently signed, sometimes by the potter or the master of the pottery, but only occasionally by the painter. Hundreds of painters are, however, identifiable by their artistic personalities: where their signatures haven't survived they are named for their subject choices, as "the Achilles Painter", by the potter they worked for, such as the Late Archaic "Kleophrades Painter", or even by their modern locations, such as the Late Archaic "Berlin Painter". Corinth once made pottery decorated without any paint. Instead a watery clay mixture was used. When the pot was fired in a kiln, the areas painted with clay mixture turned black. Unpainted areas turned a light brown or reddish brown colour, depending on the type of clay.

For 200 years the Corinthians sold their pottery all over the Greek world, and Corinth became a wealthy and busy trading centre.

[edit] Rediscovery and Scholarship

Interest in Greek art lagged behind the revival of classical scholarship during the Renaissance and revived in the academic circle round Nicholas Poussin in Rome in the 1630s. Though modest collections of vases recovered from ancient tombs in Italy were made in the 15th and 16th centuries these were regarded as Etruscan. We know that Lorenzo de Medici bought several Attic vases directly from Greece; however the connection between them and the examples excavated in central Italy was not made until much later. Winckelmann's 'Geschichte der Kunst des Alterthums of 1764 first refuted the Etruscan origin of what we now know to be Greek pottery, yet Sir William Hamilton's two collections, one lost at sea the other now in the British Museum, were still published as "Etruscan vases"; it would take until 1837 with Stackelberg's Gräber der Hellenen to conclusively end the controversy.

Much of the early study of Greek vases took the form of production of albums of the images they depict, however neither D'Hancarville's nor Tischbein's folios record the shapes or attempt to supply a date and are therefore unreliable as an archaeological record. Serious attempts at scholary study made steady progress over the 19th century starting with the founding of the Instituto di Corrispondenza in Rome in 1828 (later the German Archaeological Institute), followed by Eduard Gerhard's pioneering study Auserlesene Griechische Vasenbilder (1840 to 1858), the establishment of the journal Archaeologische Zeitung in 1843 and the Ecole d'Athens 1846. It was Gerhard who first outlined the chronology we now use, namely: Orientalizing (Geometric, Archaic), Black Figure, Red Figure, Polychromatic (Hellenistic). Finally it was Otto Jahn's 1854 catalogue Vasensammlung of the Pinakothek, Munich, that set the standard for the scientific description of Greek pottery, recording the shapes and inscriptions with a previously unseen fastidousness. Jahn's study was the standard textbook on the history and chronology of Greek pottery for many years, yet in common with Gerhard he dated the introduction of the red figure technique to a century later than was in fact the case. This error was corrected when the Aρχαιολογικη 'Εταιρεια undertook the excavation of the Acropolis in 1885 and discovered the so-called "Persian debris" of red figure pots destroyed by Persian invaders in 480 BC.

Where the 19th century was a period of discovery and the laying out of first principles the 20th century has been one of consolidation and intellectual industry. Efforts to record and publish the totality of public collections of vases began with the creation of the Corpus vasorum antiquorum under Edmond Pottier and the Beazley archive. It is to John Beazely's comprehensive studies Attic Red-Figure Vase Painters 1942 and Attic Black-Figure Vase Painters 1956 we owe the naming of dozens of previously forgotten artists by stylistic analysis. Similarly Arthur Dale Trendall supplied the chronology to the otherwise neglected Apulian school.

[edit] Types of Ancient Greek pottery

see article Typology of Greek Vase Shapes

• Alabastron
• Amphora
• Aryballos
• Askos
• Epinetron
• Fish plate
• Hydria
• Kalathos
• Kantharos
• Krater
• Kylix
• Lebes
• Lebes Gamikos
• Lekythos
• Loutrophoros
• Mastos
• Oinochoe
• Pelike
• Phiale
• Pithos
• Psykter
• Pyxis
• Skyphos
• Stamnos

[edit] See also

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Greek vases

• Black-figure pottery
• Red-figure pottery

[edit] External links

• Beazley Achive of Greek pottery
• Ancient Greek Pottery Gallery
• S. Bleecker-Luce, A Brief History of the Study of Greek Vase Painting, American Philosophical Society 1918

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