Greek Pottery

Did you know that the Ancient Greeks made pottery over 3,000 years ago (1,000 BCE) in Ancient Greece? The Greeks stopped doing pottery around 350 BCE when wall-painting became popular, but before wall-painting pottery was a good way for us to discover things about Ancient Greece. Pottery allowed us to be able to learn about the Ancients Greeks’ cultural beliefs.

While pottery from Ancient Greece shows cultural beliefs and practice of religion in Ancient Greece it also shows ways for archaeologists to be able to study chronology. Not only is some ancient pottery important to us, pottery was especially important to the Greeks as well. After all, the clay items were used everyday for storing food and drinks. There are many distinct qualities in the different shapes of pottery. Such as curving at the top (vases) or straight sides with a curved bottom so nothing could come out (cups). These include cups, plates, vases, jugs, and massive amphorae. The most common piece of pottery was the amphorae which was mainly used to store wine. This was because amphoras tended to be bigger in size after the potters had made them. Speaking of potters and making pottery it was actually really difficult to make pottery since it was such a long process.

It may not be that hard to shape the red-orange Attic clay on the potter’s wheel into a shape, but you had to be patient and have precise timing. One interesting thing about pottery back then is that you would make the piece in sections so the foot, lower and upper body, neck, and handles (if needed) would be made separately then joined together with a ‘slip’ to be put back on the potter’s wheel to make sure that the join parts would look smooth as if it was always in one piece. The pottery would then b...

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..., but in fact not everything is black. Females were white and the clothing would be purple-red. The painters probably added those colors in because black-figure pottery often told narratives and wanted to add more color than just plain old black. As I previously indicated there is also a style of pottery called red-figure pottery which replaced the black-figure pottery style around 530 BCE and continued for about 130 years. Like the black-figure pottery the red-figure pottery also showed a narrative, but with the red-figure pottery you had to turn the cup in your hand. The red-figure pottery and black-figure pottery were the last pottery styles before everybody moved on to wall-painting.

As you can see there is a lot of history behind Ancient Greece pottery. Pottery was a trend for roughly 700 years in Ancient Greece 3,000 years ago and is still a trend now-a-days.