In this technical peculiarity they resemble the fabrics of Ionia, where the white slip was universal. This is a pipe-clay wash laid on the rough body of the vase to make a ground for painting. It is rare in Geometric fabrics, and seems to have come in with Oriental decoration; it was probably an ancient Anatolian invention, for it occurs in Hittite, Syrian, and Cypriote wares, and its immediate source may have been Lydia. The many fabrics of early Ionian style are generally represented by Rhodian vases. These are mostly jugs with rays or lotus-wreaths on foot and shoulder, and animal-friezes on the body, done on the white ground in large black-glaze figures with dull red patches. Among the filling-ornaments are looped semicircles (roundels) attached to the borders of the frieze. Human subjects are rare, the most prominent animal-figures are sphinxes, and the characteristic motive is a band of grazing goats. Large plates are a frequent shape, painted with lotus designs, or with concentric panel-friezes containing heads of goats and birds. A very similar fabric, mostly found in the Ionian city of Naucratis in Egypt, has been called Milesian, but may have been made locally. Clazomenae is chiefly represented by large painted sarcophagi. The red and white orna ment on black, which was used in Protocorinthian ware, appears also on Rhodian vases, though not quite in the same forms. Red and white bands stand alone, or separate the floral and animal friezes, and the same colours are used for drawing lotus wreaths, or for filling tongues or lotus and palmette-petals, or even animals outlined by incision on the black ground. A fabric resembling the Ionian, but apparently belonging to mainland Greece, is the so called Cyrenaic, which, since the discovery of a complete stylistic series in Spartan temple-deposits, has been known rather as Laconian. The excavation of Cyrene should decide the question of its origin. It is a white-slipped ware with bold decorative painting, large black and white chequers and step-patterns and solid rays in its subgeometric form, pomegranates and lotus-buds formally disposed between animal-friezes in its orientalizing phase. Its early shapes are somewhat fantastic; a typical drinking-cup (lakaina) has a low convex body, from which two long loop handles spring, and a tall concave lip or neck. A mature work is the famous kylix in the Bibliotheque Nationale of Paris, with a picture of King Arcesilas of Cyrene supervising in oriental state the lading of a ship. It is this scene that caused the fabric first to be attributed to Cyrene.
Towards the end of the 7th cen tury the local fabrics, which had diverged so widely in their orientalizing phases, tended to come together again, perhaps under Athenian influence, in the Black-figure style. The expansive in terest in human form and human life enlarged the fields in which these subjects were accommodated; animal and floral friezes were reduced in width and relegated to the less conspicuous positions on the pots. In the mature style of the 6th century ornamental animals hardly occur at all, and floral patterns are only used for borders or bands and panels in which narrative-pictures are dis played. But the new pictorial style retained the technique of the old ornament. The figures are drawn in black silhouette on the clay ground, and inner details are indicated by incision and by colour. The same dull red and white pigments were laid on the black glaze or on the clay in place of it. Both were decoratively applied without consideration of reality to produce a colour pattern, but white was specially used for faces and limbs of women. White slip disappears as a mark of locality, but occurs
on special occasions in several fabrics. The normal surface has the same colour as the body of the clay, light yellow in Corinthian, light red in Attic and most other wares. The natural colour of Attic clay was enriched with red ochre (miltos) and this sub stance had such industrial importance that its supply was strictly controlled by the Athenian Government. Corinthian ware in its latest development tried to imitate the Attic colour with a red wash. The history of Greek pottery in the 6th century is the continuous progress of the Athenian fabric towards its ultimate monopoly. At the beginning of the century there were numerous other black-figure wares, Protocorinthian and Corinthian, La conian (or Cyrenaic), Boeotian, Chalcidian, and Ionian, but hardly any of these survived beyond its elementary stages. The passing of Protocorinthian into Corinthian was accompanied by such a fundamental change of content that the process is obscured, and it is sometimes supposed that the Corinthian potteries dis placed those of some neighbouring city, perhaps Sicyon, which had produced the Protocorinthian ware. But though the output was increased and the style changed, the fabric remained con stant, and most of the old forms continue to appear with the new decoration. The change took place at the end of the 7th cen tury, and was evidently due to new Oriental models, perhaps textiles instead of metal work. Globular and baggy oval bottles (aryballoi and alabastra) came into fashion, with large figures, often monstrous or grotesque, painted in a loose style which is the antithesis of Protocorinthian precision. Backgrounds that had been sparsely studded with neat dot-rosettes are now filled up with irregular patches. This is the common ware that was dis tributed east and west by Corinthian trade. Besides it is a pic torial style which omits the filling-ornament. There is a splendid series of large Corinthian bowls (krateres) bearing scenes from life and legend, with single subsidiary bands of animals or horse men. In their free use of colour, their technique of outline drawing, and their deep designs of overlapping figures, these vase pictures probably give a better idea of monumental painting than any other surviving documents. Chalcidian pottery stands very close to metal work in its angular vase-shapes and sharp figures. The evidence by which the various fabrics are assigned to their localities lies in the forms of the letters in which the names of gods and heroes are inscribed beside their figures. Ionian black figure designs are lively in colour and in action; the Clazomenian fabric, like the Laconian, retains its subgeometric subsidiary bands. Ionian wares were largely imitated in Etruria, and some of them may have been made there by immigrant craftsmen. Such are the Caeretan Hydriai, a brilliantly decorated series of water-jars found at Cervetri (Caere). Their free floral patterns connect them with the Fikellura vases (so-called after a Rhodian site), an odd old-fashioned group that keeps the white slip tech nique and is shy of narrative-pictures. One of the last Ionian in ventions, the eye-kylix (a cup mainly decorated with two large pairs of eyes), was adopted by Attic potters. A related Attic series (Kleinmeister kylikes) has miniature figures, often single, in an upper band, and below these, or sometimes alone, a line of minute writing, a drinking posy, a love-name or an artist's signature.