Greek pottery: black-figure and red-figure

In ancient Greece, almost every home used pots made of clay. People kept water, wine and olive oil in them, and they cooked, ate and drank with them. Fired clay was called κέραμος (keramos) in Greek. It gives English the word “ceramics”.

In Athens, many potters worked in one district, the Κεραμεικός (Kerameikos), the “potters’ quarter”. They came because the small river Eridanos had good clay on its banks. The ancient traveller Pausanias told a different story about the name: a hero called Keramos. The potter, the κεραμεύς, shaped the wet clay on a turning wheel, the τροχός. Then a painter, the ζωγράφος, decorated the pot with slip, a very fine, liquid clay. Greek pots have no glaze like modern plates: their shine comes from this slip.

Last, the pots went into a very hot oven, the kiln or κάμινος. The firing had three stages. First, air came in and the whole pot turned orange-red. Next, the potter closed the kiln and made it smoky, so the whole pot turned black. At the end, air came in again. The rough clay became orange once more, but the fine slip stayed shiny black.

The first great style was black-figure. The painter drew the figures with slip, so after the firing they were black on the orange clay. Then he scratched fine lines into the black with a sharp tool. These lines showed eyes, hair, muscles and the folds of clothes. Sometimes he added a little purple-red or white paint.

In the 7th century BC, the city of Corinth was the leading maker and seller of painted pots. Corinthian pots often show rows of animals, like lions and birds. In the 6th century BC, Athens overtook Corinth, and Athenian black-figure pots travelled all over the Mediterranean. Many of them were found in Etruscan tombs in Italy.

One kind of pot kept the old style for a very long time. At the Panathenaia, the great festival of the goddess Athena, winners of the games received big jars, the ἀμφορεῖς (amphoras), full of olive oil. These prize amphoras show Athena with her spear and shield. Painters decorated them in black-figure even in the 4th century BC, when the style was long out of fashion.

Around 530 BC, painters in Athens tried something new: red-figure. They swapped the colours. Now the painter left the figures in the colour of the clay and covered the background with black slip. After the firing, the figures were orange-red on a shiny black background. Many experts think the workshop of a potter named Andokides was among the first to use it, but we cannot be sure.

Why was this better? In black-figure, the painter had to scratch every detail. In red-figure, he could draw the details with a brush. A fine brush gave soft lines for faces, hands, hair and moving clothes. So the people on red-figure pots look more alive, and painters could show bodies that turn and move.

Red-figure became the favourite style of Athens in the 5th century BC. Some of the finest Greek pots in the world come from this time. Athenian workshops went on making red-figure pots until the end of the 4th century BC.

Greek pots are like a picture book of the ancient world. They show gods and heroes from the myths, but also everyday life: athletes, soldiers, musicians, women fetching water, friends at a party. Fired clay also lasts for thousands of years. Even when a pot breaks, the pieces survive in the ground, and the styles changed often. That is why archaeologists use pottery to date the places they dig.

Some artists wrote their names on their pots. The word ἔγραψεν means “painted (it)”, so it names the painter. The word ἐποίησεν means “made (it)”. It usually names the potter, but some experts think it could name the owner of the workshop. A few artists, like Exekias, signed with both words.

Each shape had a job. The hydria carried water, the kylix was a wide drinking cup, and the krater was a big bowl for mixing wine with water. Today you can see Greek pots in museums all over the world, in Athens, London, Paris and New York.