Ancient Greek Pottery

The Importance of Pottery

Storage containers, cookware and dishes were as necessary for the Ancient Greeks as they are for us.

Without much glass and with metal expensive, clay was a very handy material.

Clay

Clay is inexpensive and readily available.

It is weathered rock that has crumbled to dust.

It is easily worked and can be shaped as desired.

Once fired it is quite strong and waterproof.

It makes an ideal material for containers of all sorts.

The impurities in clay give it varying colors. For instance, red clay contains

iron.

Throwing Pots

The clay is kneaded and placed on a wheel.

As the wheel spins, the potter shapes the clay and forms it into the desired shapes.

Large pots are made in sections. Handles, feet and spouts were also fabricated separately.

Sections are glued together with a layer of thin, watery, clay, known as a slip.

Decoration

Once made, the entire pot is painted with a thin black slip. How this slip is applied will create an image.

The entire object is then fired in 3 stages.

Pottery Art

Only men were allowed to make pots in Ancient Greece, though women were permitted to paint them.

Pottery was frequently made by slaves.

What survives is often not high art. Really valuable containers tended to be made of bronze, silver or gold. However, little of this survives because the metal was reused. Pottery fragments, having no real value, survive.

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Form and Function

Pots were shaped according to their function.

Form & Function

Amphora were large storage containers made with two carrying handles.

• The most frequent form of vase was the amphora.

• It was made in all sizes, from

the small drug vase two or three inches high to the large receiver of oil, grain, fruit, wine, or water.

• This was a favorite vase for decoration.

Form and Function

Pysix were small storage boxes.

Form and Function

Alabastron were small vases for perfume or oil.

Form and Function

Aryballos were containers that athletes used to hold their oil supply.

Form and Function

Hydria were used to carry water from wells, springs or rivers.

Form and Function

Kraters were bowls to mix water and wine in.

Form and Function

Wine was ladled from kraters into shallow wine cups called kylix.

Form and Function

It was also poured directly out of wine jugs called oinochoe.

Form and Function

Lekythos were used to store oil

Periods and Styles

Pottery is one of the oldest surviving art forms from Ancient Greece.

Works and fragments survive from the 2nd millennium BC to the end of the 1st century BC.

Greek pottery was traded throughout the Mediterranean world and beyond.

Periods and StylesMinoan & Mycenaean

Minoan & Mycenaean pottery is the oldest that we know of.

It was exuberantly decorated.

It tends have as a trait “horror vacui” or fear of leaving open space.

Periods and StylesGeometric

Regular geometric patterns and shapes, not animal forms, are pervasive.

From the end of the 2nd millennium the geometric style dominates.

Periods and StylesGeometric

Periods and StylesGeometric

Periods and StylesOrientalizing

Contact with Asia brought new innovation in design.

Stylized dot flowers and mythical animals reappear in the bands of design.

The artwork is done in bands known as registers.

Periods Periods and StylesOrientalizing

During the orientalizing period (roughly 725-650 BC) the black figure technique is employed in Corinth.

In the 7th century BC, this spreads to Athens.

Periods and StylesArchaic

The Archaic style existed from around 700 to 480 BC.

Mythology and life became important subjects.

Some artists signed their work.

Periods and StylesBlack-Figure Artists painted black

images silhouetted against the natural red clay background.

Details were inserted by etching the black figures.

White or purple paint could then be added.

The Black-figure style really did not dominate until the 6th century BC.

Periods and StylesBlack-Figure

Periods and StylesBlack-Figure

Periods and StylesBlack-Figure

Periods and StylesRed-Figure

Red -figure was achieved by reversing the method of black figure painting.

The red figures are preserved and the background is painted.

This is more difficult but it allowed the design to be seen better at a distance and it leaves the contour of the pot more visible.

The red-figure style appeared between 530-525 BC.

Periods and StylesRed-Figure

Periods and StylesRed-Figure

Periods and StylesClassical – White Ground White-figure technique: chalky

white clay slip used to provide a background for the painted figures

A variation on red-figure

Artist covers pot with white clay, then applies black glaze to outline the figures and color them in with brown, purple, red, and white

Limited range of colors, so not used on every-day items

The End

By the end of the 5th century BC, pottery painting seems to lose its status as an art form. Some suggest that metal bowls and vases were now favored by the rich.

Outside Greece, local manufacturing continued, particularly in what is now Southern Italy.

In the 3rd century BC, the painting of pottery before firing seems to end. Decoration was now separate from potting entirely.

Questions to think about

1. What do you think is on the vases you saw?

2. What is the same about the pictures you saw? What is different?

3. What do you think people did with these vases?

Questions to think about

Which of the following is an example of and Amphora style Vase?

a. b. c. d.