History of Ancient Pottery 27

History of Ancient Pottery 27

The difficulties in the painting of Greek vases must have been

numerous. In the first place, it was necessary for the artist to finish

his sketch with great rapidity, since the clay rapidly absorbed the

colouring matter, and the outlines were required to be bold and

continuous, any joins producing a bad effect. Again, the vases were

often painted while in an upright position, and the artist was obliged

to stoop, rise, and execute his work in these difficult attitudes; nor

could he remove the pencil from any figure which he had once begun. The

eye must have been his only guide. Then, as he was obliged to draw his

outline upon a damp surface, the black colour which he used was

instantly confounded with the tint of the clay. The lines grew broad at

first, and afterwards contracted themselves, leaving but a light trace,

so that the artist could with difficulty discern what he had been

doing. Moreover, the lines, once begun, could not be left off except

where they met other lines which cut or terminated them. Thus, for

example, the profile of a head must have been executed with a single

continuous line, which could not be interrupted till it met the neck;

and in drawing a thigh or leg, the whole outline must have been

finished without taking off the pencil: proceeding from the top

downwards, making use of the point to mark the horizontal lines, and

afterwards rising upwards to finish the opposite side. The drawing was

done entirely by the hand and no pattern used.

 

The outlines round the figures on R.F. vases were drawn strongly, in

the manner described above, to prevent the background encroaching on

the figure. That this was done while the clay was moist appears by the

outlines uniting, which could not have taken place if the clay had been

dry. It was so difficult to fill in the outlines without alteration,

that they were frequently changed, and sometimes the ground was not

reached, while at others it exceeded the line.

 

The ancient artists, notwithstanding these difficulties, observed all

the laws of balance and proportion, especially ἰσομετρία, or the law of

equal height of all figures; conveyed __EXPRESSION__ by means of attitude;

and, by the use of profile, and the introduction of accessories, or

small objects, into the background, contrived to compensate for the

want of perspective.

 

This latter deficiency was due to the use of flat colours, which did

not allow of shades, and the figures were consequently not seen in

masses distinguished by light and shade, but isolated in the air.

Hence, in order to make the figures distinct, and to express by

attitude all the actions and sentiments required, the artist was

compelled to use profile. The black colour, the choice of which may at

first appear singular, is, after all, the most harmonious, and the best

suited for showing the elegance and purity of the outline; whilst by

its aptness to reveal any defects of shape, it compelled the artist to

be very careful in his drawing.

 

The colours employed[805] were, as we have seen, remarkably few in

number. Of the black varnish which plays such an important part, and of

its composition we have already spoken. Of the opaque accessory

colours, the white is said by Brongniart[806] to be a carbonate of lime

or fine clay. It is evidently an earth of some kind, and gives no trace

of lead under analysis. The creamy slip of the white-ground vases is of

similar character, and appears to be a kind of pipeclay. It was

probably of the same character as the earth of Melos used by

Polygnotos.[807] The deep purple or crimson, so largely employed on the

Corinthian and early Attic B.F. vases, is known to be an oxide of iron,

an element which entered largely into the red glaze. The yellow found

on the white vases and those of Apulia as an accessory to white is of

an ochrous nature. The red used for outlines on the white lekythi is

probably not vermilion (_minium_), but red ochre (μίλτος, _rubrica_).

Blue and green, which are rarely found, and only on vases of the later

styles, were produced from a basis of copper. On vases from the time of

Euphronios and Brygos (about 480 B.C.) onwards, gilding was

occasionally employed, the process being one which we have already

described (see above, p. 210). Good instances of this process are to be

seen in the fourth-century vases from Capua, which are glazed black

throughout and ornamented solely with gilding.[808] But the gold leaf

has often perished. Besides Capua, these vases are found chiefly in

Athens and the Cyrenaica.

 

5. STATUS OF POTTERS

 

It now remains to say something respecting the makers of Greek

vases—the potters of antiquity. Unfortunately, however, little is known

of their condition, except that they formed a guild, or fraternity, and

that they amassed considerable fortunes by exporting their products to

the principal emporia of the ancient world. The existence of two

_Kerameikoi_, or pottery districts, at Athens shows the great

commercial importance of the manufacture. In later times there seems to

have been a considerable tendency to division of labour among the

potters, and each man “specialised” in some particular shape; hence we

find them characterised as χυτρεύς and χυτροπλάθος,[809]

ληκυθοποιός,[810] καδοποιός,[811] or κωθωνοποιός.[812] It is assumed

that the word ἐποίησεν, “made,” when found on a vase, indicates the

potter, and not the artist, although it is reasonable to suppose that

when no artist’s name accompanies the formula the potter was at the

same time the painter. On one vase the names of two potters, Glaukytes

and Archikles, are found[813]; one has been supposed to be the

artist’s, but it is more probable they were partners.

 

By the Athenians, potters were called _Prometheans_,[814] from the

Titan Prometheus, who made man out of clay—which, according to one

myth, was the blood of the Titans, or Giants—and was thus the founder

of the fictile art. It was not, however, much esteemed, although

without doubt the pursuit of it was a lucrative one, and many of the

trade realised large fortunes; in proof of which may be cited the

well-known anecdote of Agathokles,[815] who, at a time when the rich

used plate, was in the habit of mixing earthenware with it at his

table, telling his officers that he formerly made such ware, but that

now, owing to his prudence and valour, he was served in gold—an

anecdote which also suggests that the profession was not highly

esteemed. The guild at Athens was called ἐκ κεραμέων, “of the

potters,”[816] and we also hear of a college of κεραμεῖς at

Thyateira.[817] However, the competition in the trade was so warm as to

pass into a proverb, and the animosity of some of the rival potters is

even recorded upon the vases.[818] To this spirit are also probably to

be referred many of the tricks of the trade, such as imitations of the

names of makers, and the numerous illegible inscriptions. When the

potter’s establishment—called an _ergasterion_—was large, he employed

under him a number of persons, some of whom were probably free but poor

citizens, whilst others were slaves belonging to him.[819] How the

labour was subdivided there are no means of accurately determining, but

the following hands were probably employed:—(1) A potter, to make the

vase on the wheel; (2) an artist, to trace with a point in outline the

subject of the vase; (3) a painter, who executed the whole subject in

outline, and who probably returned it to No. 2, when incised lines were

required; (4) a modeller, who added such parts of the vase as were

moulded; (5) a fireman, who took the vase to the furnace and brought it

back; (6) a fireman for the furnace; (7) packers, to prepare the vases

for exportation. Hence it may readily be conceived that a large

establishment employed a considerable number of hands, and exhibited an

animated scene of industrial activity.CHAPTER VI

_PRIMITIVE FABRICS_

 

Introductory—Cypriote Bronze-Age pottery—Classification—Mycenaean

pottery in Cyprus—Graeco-Phoenician fabrics—Shapes and

decoration—Hellenic and later vases—Primitive pottery in

Greece—Troy—Thera and Cyclades—Crete—Recent discoveries—Mycenaean

pottery—Classification and distribution—Centres of

fabric—Ethnography and chronology.

 

 

In the preceding chapters we have given a general _résumé_ of the

subject of Greek pottery; we have discussed the sites on which Greek

vases have been found, the methods employed in their manufacture, the

shapes which they assume, and the uses to which they were put both on

earth and in the tombs; and we have now reached perhaps the most

important part of the subject, at any rate in the eyes of

archaeologists, namely, the history of the rise, development and

decadence of painting on Greek vases.

 

It has already been noted (in Chapter I.) that this branch of the study

of Greek vases is one that has only been called into existence in

comparatively recent times, and that up to the year 1854 or thereabouts

all attempts at dating the vases (chiefly of course owing to the

poverty of material) were purely empirical and tentative. They were

moreover largely combined with fantastic interpretations of the painted

designs.

 

During the last forty years, and especially during the last twenty, the

steady growth of archaeological study and increased attention to

excavations have enormously increased both the material at command and

the power of utilising it with scientific method. The extensive finds

of pottery in Greece, Asia Minor, Northern Africa, Italy, and

elsewhere, including more especially products of the earlier periods,

have enabled the students of the subject to trace the sequence of

fabrics from the rude wares of Troy and the Greek Islands up to the

graceful and finished products of the Athenian _ateliers_, and onward

to the overgrown luxuriousness of the gigantic Apulian wares. The

subjects of the paintings, once of all-absorbing, are now only of

subordinate interest, except so far as they illustrate certain phases

of development, and the chief interest of the vases is the question of

their origin, their maker, or their place in relation to others.

 

It will therefore be the object of this and of the succeeding chapters

to trace with all possible detail, as far as space permits, the history

of Greek vase-manufacture and vase-painting in all their aspects. We

have already indicated (p. 31) the limits within which the subject

falls, and the convenient rough division into four main classes of

which it permits (p. 23). This introductory chapter, therefore, deals

with the primitive fabrics, leading up, through the two following, to

the period of black-figured vases in Chapter IX. The lines of

demarcation are, indeed, difficult if not impossible to draw, but they

must not in any case be taken as rigid ones, being largely

conventional, and only adopted in order to obtain a point of division

for the chapters.

 

Perhaps the leading feature of the early history of Greek vases is the

gradual coalescence of the numerous local fabrics first into two or

three main streams, and finally into the one great and all-absorbing

current of Athenian art. In the sixth century this was really brought

about more by historical causes than anything else, as a result of the

gradually increasing supremacy of Athens in art and culture from the

time of the Peisistratidae down to that of Perikles.

 

One region, and one only, pursues its artistic course without regard to

the contemporaneous tendencies prevailing in the Greek world, and that

is the island of =Cyprus=. Here again the causes are largely political,

as we shall see; largely also ethnographical and geographical, from the

character of the inhabitants and the position of the island, a

meeting-place and bone of contention between the great nations of the

Eastern Mediterranean. For this reason we propose to deal first with

the pottery of Cyprus, which has little in common with that of the rest

of Greece, and always retains something of its primitive character,

though it is always as much influenced from Greece on the one hand as

from the East on the other. It is in Cyprus also that we meet with some

of the earliest remains of pottery yet found on Greek soil.

 

§ 1. CYPRIOTE POTTERY

 

BIBLIOGRAPHY

 

Cesnola, _Cyprus_; O.-Richter, _Kypros, the Bible, and Homer_;

Perrot and Chipiez, _Hist. de l’Art_, iii. p. 648 ff.; _Cyprus

Mus. Cat._ (Myres and O.-Richter); _B.M. Excavations in Cyprus_

(Turner Bequest), 1894–6; Dümmler in _Ath. Mitth._ xi. (1886), p.

209 ff.; _Archaeologia_, xlv. p. 127 ff.; Pottier, _Cat. des

Vases ant. du Louvre_, i. p. 82 ff., and other references there

given.

 

 

In order to understand aright the history of Cypriote art, it is indeed

necessary to know something of its ethnography and political history,

and the various influences to which it has been subjected. But space

forbids us to do more than make very brief allusions to the more

important of these features. Speaking generally, Cyprus may be regarded

as a centre wherein have met all the currents of ancient civilisation,

forming an amalgamation of artistic elements. Thus Cypriote art, though

it loses in originality, gains in interest; and yet though often

slavishly imitative, it has at bottom great individuality, more

especially in its pottery. Hence it will be seen that it is essentially

necessary to consider the pottery of Cyprus as a thing apart.

 

As regards chronology, except for a certain determinable sequence of

artistic phases, even more caution than in dealing with Hellenic art is

required. The remarkable conservatism and persistence of types

exhibited by Cypriote art has more than once proved a pitfall, and has

given rise to considerable controversy at one time or another. Dates

can only be used in the vaguest manner.

 

The pottery of Cyprus falls under three headings, which for

convenience, though not perhaps with the strictest accuracy, are

usually defined as follows:—

 

1. _Bronze Age_, from about 2500 B.C. to 800 B.C.

 

2. _Graeco-Phoenician period_, from 800 B.C. to 400 B.C., overlapping

with

 

3. _Hellenic period_, from 550 B.C. to 200 B.C., representing the

time during which imported Greek vases are found in the tombs,

native pottery gradually dying out except in the form of plain

vessels.

 

The pottery of the Bronze-Age period again falls into two distinct

periods: (1) Copper Age or pre-Mycenaean period (2500–1500 B.C.),

during which few bronze implements are found in the tombs, and all the

pottery is purely indigenous, the work of the original inhabitants of

the island, without any admixture of importations. (2) The Mycenaean

period (1500–800 B.C.), during which the local pottery (including both

unpainted and painted vases) is reinforced by large quantities of

imported Mycenaean pottery, together with elaborately decorated vases

of Mycenaean technique, either made locally or specially made for

Cyprus and imported.

 

The sites on which Bronze-Age remains are found (see above, p. 66) are

chiefly confined to the central and southern parts of the island, the

most important sites being near the modern towns of Nicosia, Larnaka,

and Famagusta. The discovery in these tombs of such objects as

milking-bowls and querns is an additional proof of the conclusion

naturally to be drawn—that the early inhabitants of Cyprus were a race

of pastoral lowlanders.[820] The tombs (see p. 35) are mostly pit-tombs

of moderate depth, recalling in type the Egyptian _mastaba_, and burial

is universal.

 

There is no doubt that the art of pottery was introduced into Cyprus

coincidently with the beginning of the Copper Age, which may be placed

at about the year 2000 B.C. Although no bronze is found in the earliest

tombs, on the other hand stone implements are absent, and the types of

the pottery are identical with those of the later Bronze Age. It will

be seen that it presents throughout very striking parallels with the

pottery of Hissarlik, which will form the subject of the next section.

The forms are largely similar and the technique is the same, but the

Hissarlik pottery is ruder and of inferior clay. Stone implements are

found at Hissarlik, but no copper, from which the inference may be

drawn that that metal, being indigenous to Cyprus, supplanted stone

there at an earlier date than in the Troad, whither it had to find its

way by means of commerce. It was no doubt largely due to the existence

of its copper ores that Cyprus so early shows an advance in its

civilisation.

 

The shapes of the earliest Cypriote pottery are purely indigenous and

very characteristic, but the technique may very likely have been

learned from elsewhere; in regard to which it should be noted that as

it is invariably hand-made, an Egyptian origin is altogether precluded,

owing to the early use of the wheel for pottery in that country (see

pp. 7, 206). For the most part the forms are characterised by a

tendency to fantastic and unsymmetrical modelling, with a preference

for complicated forms, such as two or three vases joined together.

Others again imitate gourds or vessels of straw and basket-work, such

as are used in Cyprus at the present day. They have no foot or

“base-ring” to stand upon; and another characteristic is the frequent

absence of handles, the place of which is supplied by small ears, by

means of which the vase was hung up or carried by cords.[821] Sometimes

these ears cover the whole outline of the vase. The plastic principle

is always popular in the Bronze-Age pottery, and manifests itself in

more than one direction. From the first it is exhibited in the

tendency, so common in early art, to combine the vase and the

statuette,[822] a tendency which is even stronger in the pottery of

Hissarlik. It also takes the form of designs in relief covering the

surface of, or moulded to, the vase.

 

In one point Cyprus is manifestly in advance of the rest of the ancient

world, and that is, in the decoration of the pottery. Here, in fact, we

meet with the first attempts at painted vases, combined with the

employment of a fine bright red or polished black slip to cover the

surface. In the earlier varieties the designs, when they occur, are

confined to simple rectilinear geometrical patterns incised through the

slip before baking; but these are soon supplemented by the employment,

first of a matt-white pigment, secondly of a brown-black paint obtained

from the native umber. The only other locality in which painted vases

occur at so early a period is the island of Thera (see below, p. 260).

 

We pass now to the consideration of the later Bronze-Age

pottery—namely, that which is found in tombs together with vases of

Mycenaean style. In this we see various modifications of the indigenous

art, and witness its eventual transformation by the introduction of new

processes and ideas from various sources. The main streams of influence

are three in number, coming from the east, south, and west

respectively. Of these the first represents the Asiatic civilisations

of Babylonia and the Hittites, to whom in the first place are due the

engraved cylinders frequently found in these tombs, and at a

comparatively late date such objects as the ivory draught-box from

Enkomi in the British Museum, which affords points of comparison with

the reliefs of Kouyounjik. Egyptian influences date from the invasion

of Cyprus by Thothmes III. (eighteenth dynasty), about 1450 B.C., as

exemplified by the frequent occurrence of scarabs and porcelain

objects. A counter-influence of Cyprus on Egypt is seen in the presence

of exported Cypriote pottery in tombs at Kahun, Saqqara, and

elsewhere.[823] Lastly, there is the far more extensive influence of

the Mycenaean civilisation, covering several hundred years, and

eventually absorbing the indigenous fabrics until the foundations of a

new phase of decorative art were laid on a combination of the two. The

Mycenaean vases belong to the later styles exclusively (see below, p.

271), and show a strong preference for certain forms such as the

false-necked amphora and the large richly-decorated krater peculiar to

Cyprus; but these we must discuss later in fuller detail. Briefly, they

represent the first entry of Greece proper into the Cypriote world.

 

The ethnological affinities of the early inhabitants of Cyprus cannot

be positively ascertained. In M. Heuzey’s opinion they were Asiatics,

Syrian rather than Phoenician, and he suggests that the names of Kition

(Chittim) and Amathus (Hamath) imply Hittite and Hamathite colonists.

Dümmler regarded them as closely akin to the race which inhabited the

second city at Hissarlik,[824] an idea to which the similarity of the

pottery might be thought to lend support. At all events in Greek legend

this people was personified by the mythical king Kinyras, the father of

Adonis, who came from the neighbouring Asiatic coast. The Hellenic, or

rather Achaean, invasion is crystallised into the legends of Teucer’s

colonisation of Salamis after the fall of Troy,[825] of an Arcadian

settlement at Kerynia and elsewhere, and of the founding of Curium by

Argives (? Mycenaeans).[826]

 

The first attempt to classify the pottery of Cyprus, and to distinguish

between the Bronze-Age wares and what are now known as the

Graeco-Phoenician fabrics, was made by the late Mr. T. B. Sandwith in

1876.[827] Considering the comparative poverty of material at his

command, and the state of archaeological knowledge at the time, his

brief but illuminating monograph is a wonderfully accurate and

scientific contribution, and, so far as it goes, his classification can

still be accepted in the main. But the extensive series of excavations

in the island since the British occupation, and the investigation of

such fruitful sites as Salamis, Curium, and Kition, have resulted in a

great advance of our knowledge of the subject. The elaborate

classification made by Messrs. Myres and Ohnefalsch-Richter of the

representative collections of the Cyprus Museum must for the present be