Amazing Pottery

what was the point of making black figure pottery in athens?

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1. Read below the two different thoughts on this. I was taught the first theory. The technical expertise that Greek potters and vase painters possessed is still elusive to modern scholars who attempt to recreate them. Through analysis of the composition of the clay and "glazes" of Attic pots, as well as technical errors that have been preserved on them, it has been possible to understand the process despite an inability to duplicate it. The black decoration on the pots in both black and red-figured ware was not a "glaze" as the term is generally understood today. In modern terms it is closer to a "slip," "engobe" or "terra sigillata;" solutions of wet clay which can be colored with various oxides. The Greeks were so skilled at controlling their processes that their engobe, as I will refer to it, was not colored when it was made, but turned black in the firing process. The term "glaze" is confusing and inadequate. The use of glaze today involves a two-part firing process, where its application occurs after a pot has been fired once to remove all excess moisture to a stage called "bisque." Greek pots were only fired once, and the application of the engobe occurred while the clay was still in the "greenware" state. Also, glazes today contain silica, which melts at high temperatures to form a glassy surface. The addition of silica to a glaze requires that pots be separated in the firing or else they will stick to eachother when the glaze cools. The engobe on Attic pots never melted, and therefore allowed for the stacking of pots in the kiln. In imagining the process of decorating an Attic pot, it must be remembered that the engobe, when applied, did not differ substantially in color from the surface of the pot to which it was applied since they were made from the same clay body. It was therefore difficult for a vase-painter to know what had been painted and what had not, and some vases exist which show mistakes in this process. Noble suggests that vegetable coloring might have been added to an engobe to aid in differentiation, and the coloring would have burned out in the firing.28 Not only does this make sense from a technical point of view, but if we are to believe the images of the pottery-making process, some of them clearly show that the painter is painting onto a pot's surface in black. read the rest on the site below; http://www.cm.aces.utexas.edu/faculty/skrukowski/writings/pots.html The next believe is from wikipedia's understanding of how this occured and why. The black-figure pottery technique is a style of ancient Greek pottery painting in which the decoration appears as black silhouettes on a red background. Originated in Corinth during the early 7th century BC, it was introduced into Attica about a generation later. Other notable black-figure potteries existed at Sparta and in eastern Greece. The technique flourished until being practically replaced by the more advanced red-figure pottery technique in 530 BC, although later examples do exist. Greek vases were made of a pale iron-rich clay which turned a reddish-orange colour when fired. The design was sketched in outline, then filled in using refined clay as paint. Details would be added with an engraving tool, scratching through the paint layer to the clay below. The vessel would then be fired in a kiln at a temperature of about 800°C, with the resultant oxidization turning the vase to a reddish-orange colour. The temperature was then raised to about 950°C with the kiln's vents closed and green wood being added to remove the oxygen. The vessel then turned an overall black. The final stage required the vents to be re-opened to allow oxygen into the kiln, which was allowed to cool down. The vessel then returned to its reddish-orange colour due to renewed oxidization, while the now-sintered painted layer remained the glossy black colour created in the second stage. Apart from black, other colours could be used by modifying the characteristics of the clay used to paint the vase. The most common was a yellowish-white derived from a purified iron-free clay, and a purplish-red derived from the same refined clay used to produce the black areas mixed with ochre (red iron oxide) and water. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black-figure_pottery another site explaining it for children; http://www.historyforkids.org/learn/greeks/art/pottery/blackfigure.htm more sites with explanations below; http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/vase/hd_vase.htm Hope this helped, Cheers!