MISCELLANEOUS SCENES
1. Engraved gem, present whereabouts not known.
Millin, Peintures de vases antiques, II, title vignette.
Fig. 81. Youth removing vase from oven with two sticks
Millin, Peintures de vases, II, title vignette
A youth is sitting in front of an oven removing with two sticks a two-handled vase which has been placed there for drying. He is using the sticks instead of his fingers because the pot is too hot to touch; not in order to avoid injuring the fresh glaze on the vase, as has been suggested (cf. Blümner, Technologie u. Terminologie II, 1895, p. 52), for the sticks would mark the glaze as much as the fingers would. Modern potters often use sticks for removing hot ware from the kilns (cf. [p. 36]).
2. Engraved gem, present whereabouts not known.
Millin, Peintures de vases antiques, I, vignette.
Blümner, Technologie u. Terminologie, II, p. 52, fig. 13.
Fig. 82. Youth working on vases (?)
Millin, Peintures de vases, I, vignette
A youth is sitting on a low tripod in front of an oven. He holds a jug by the handle, and seems to be working on it with an instrument. It is not clear what he is doing; the way he holds the vase by one handle suggests that the vase has been fired. On the oven are a kylix and an oinochoë, perhaps placed there for drying.
3. Archaic Greek stele in the Akropolis Museum, Athens.
Lechat, La Sculpture attique avant Pheidias, p. 367, fig. 29.
Dickins, Catalogue of the Akropolis Museum at Athens, p. 272, No. 1332.
Fig. 83. Master potter (?)
Lechat, La Sculpture attique avant Phidias, p. 367, fig. 29
A bearded man is represented seated, holding in his left hand two kylikes, one by the handle, the other by the foot. A large part of the stele is missing. The figure has been interpreted, with some probability, as a “master potter.”
4. Greek stele in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.
Richter, Handbook of the Classical Collection, p. 209, fig. 125.
Fig. 84. Woman potter (?)
Met. Mus. Acc. No. 08.258.42
A woman is represented seated with a pyxis on her lap and a lekythos in one hand. On the analogy of the Akropolis stele, it is possible that here too we have a votive offering of a potter.
5. Interior of a kylix in the Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore.
Hartwig, Die griechischen Meisterschalen, pl. XVII, I, and title vignette.
Hoppin, A Handbook of Attic Red-Figured Vases, II, p. 355.
Fig. 85. Client in potter’s shop
Hartwig, Die griechischen Meisterschalen, title vignette
A client in a potter’s shop is examining the stacked ware, and holds his purse ready to pay for what he will select.
6. Fragment of a Corinthian pinax in the Berlin Museum.
Antike Denkmäler, I, 1886, pl. 8, 3a.
Furtwängler, Beschreibung der Vasensammlung zu Berlin, I, No. 831b.
Fig. 86. Ship with cargo of pottery
Antike Denkmäler, I, pl. 8, 3a
Sailing-ship with a sheet wound round the mast, and a row of jugs painted in the field above. The latter apparently indicate the cargo of the ship, and the tablet is probably an offering of a merchant to the sea-god Poseidon for the safe conduct of his precious consignment to foreign lands.
This is the only picture we have of the transport of Greek vases, which we know played so significant a part in Greek ceramic industry. Even in the seventh century B.C., when most important localities produced their own wares, such shipments must have been frequent, since, for instance, large numbers of Corinthian vases have been unearthed in Etruria, and Laconian vases are found scattered far and wide. In the sixth and fifth centuries B.C., when Athens supplied a large part of the Greek world with her pottery, the trade must have been an exceedingly active one; so that we must imagine ship after ship laden with pottery sailing from the Piraeus for distant lands.