Attic Vases continued

mold were placed together and bound in position
Additional soft clay was smeared over the joint on
the inside of the mold. Within a few hours the clay
would have dried slightly and shrunk away from the
mold, The mold was then opened and the piece re-
moved. In the case of the deer-head rhyton, a rim sec-
tion was thrown on the wheel and attached to the
molded head with clay slip. A handle was formed
freehand and attached in the same manner, Lastly the
antlers and ears were modeled and attached. After
drying, the rhyton was ready for decorating and
firing. A rhyton said to be from Taranto but not
made from the patrix shown here is also illustrated.
This same mold technique was used to make limited
quantities of vases in other shapes such as human
figures and heads.

THE PAINTED DECORATION on Attic vases was based
mainly on the use of two colors, a reddish orange and
a metallic black. The former resulted from the nat
ural color of the fired clay of the body of the vase,

a |
DEER-HEAD rhyton, perhaps from Taranto. The
Metropolitan Museum of Art, 03.3.2, Rogers Fund.

intensihed by a surface coating of yellow ocher. The
metallic black glaze, made from the same red clay,
was turned black by an ingenious process during the
firing operation. Accessory colors, such as white and
a purplish red, were also employed, but the major
colors were always the painted black and the contrast-
ing red-orange of the clay. This sophisticated although
restricted palette was not limited as a matter of
choice. These were the only pigments known to
Athenian potters that would withstand the firing
process.

To understand the use of the black glaze in deco-
rating, it is important to realize that the vases were
fired only once. After they were formed on the wheel,
they were kept in a damp room until ready to be
decorated, The glaze was applied directly onto the
firm semi-dry or leather-hard clay surface. When the
vases were completely dry, they were fired, The fir-
ing took place in three separate phases: oxidizing, re-
ducing and reoxidizing.

The process, as rediscovered by the chemist Theodor
Schumann, was based on the fact that the iron oxide
in the Attic clay was red in color when it had been
fired in an oxidizing atmosphere, and black when it
had been fired in a reducing atmosphere, Both the
clay used to form the vase and the black glaze mate-
rial which was made from the clay contain the same
iron oxides. During the first oxidizing phase of the
firing, both the vase and the glaze turned red, In the
reducing phase both turned black. Then in the final
reoxidizing phase, the porous fired clay of the vase
again turned red, but the glaze could not reoxidize to
a red color owing to the fact that it had sintered, or
partly melted, and sealed off its black iron oxide from
contact with oxygen in the air, Therefore, the vase
emerged from the firing red in color while the glaze
remained black.

The vases discussed and illustrated here are of
better craftsmanship than the bulk of the pottery used
by most of the population of ancient Athens. Solid
black-glazed ware and plain unglazed pottery were
widely used; however, they followed the standard
shapes and uses set by the finer pottery, Athenian pot-
tery, disciplined in shape and decorated with verve and
vitality, attained an excellence in ceramic technique
which has seldom if ever been equaled.

THE AUTHOR was born in 1920 in Philadelphia, and at
tended the University of Pennsylvania. Since 1956 he has
been Operating Administrator of The Metropolitan Museum
of Art in New York, and Treasurer of the Archaeological
Institute of America since 1963. Mr, Noble is the author of
anew book, The Technigues of Painted Attic Pottery (Wat-
son-Guptill), This article is an adaptation of one of the
chapters,