The potter's art is mentioned in the Scriptures, but few specimens of Hebrew wares have been found. Some vases have been exhumed in Malicia. The most remarkable pottery of antiquity was the Greek, which seems to have had another origin than the oriental. The terms keramos and ostrakon were applied by them to this material, and they made objects and vases in sun-dried clay, terra cotta, and glazed ware. The use of bricks was by no means extensive in Greece, although some public edifices were made of them Their first use is attributed to Hyperbius of Crete, and Euryalus or Agrolas. The bricks were made by a mold (pIaision) and were called after tire numbers of palms length. Some were so light that they floated on water. Besides bricks, tiles, cornices, artificial ornaments, friezes, pipes for conducting water, and drains, were molded in terra cotta. Statues and small figures, pelinoi, gaily and appropriately painted, covered with a leucoma, or white ground, and occasionally partly gilded, were in common use for votive and other purposes, and sold at a cheap price by the figurist (karoplathos). Dolls, cones, and various smaller objects were made by the potters; they were sometimes modeled, hut more generally molded. The Greeks. claimed the invention of the pot ter's wheel; and the principal cities contested the honor of tire art, Which is men tioned in Homer, and attributed to CorceOus of Athens, Hyperbius of Corinth. or Tales, fire nephew of Daedalus. Numerous vases for all the ordinary purposes of life were made by it, and others of large form, decorated also by separate ornaments, embkmata, attached to them. Large casks or pithoi were modeled on a framework of wood. Great quantities of amphora, manufactured on tire wheel, and used to contain tire choice wines of Greece, were exported from Rhodes and other cities: and their debris are found in the Crimea, Alexandria, Sicily, and other cities. Some of the earlier specimens of a glazed earthenware wore painted with colors in fresco or encaustic, from svhich afterward came the more elaborate pictures of the glazed vases of Greece. To these succeeded two or three classes of painted ware, consisting of rude representations of animals laid upon the pale red ground of the clay iu brown outline, a style prevalent at Athens and Asia Minor; which was followed by the potteries of Corinth, or the so-called Phenician or Egyptian style. The paste of the vases is of a light red or yellow, the figures in a black or moroon color, with portions enriched with crimson or purple; the backgrounds of a pale straw or lemon color; the animals, of a larger size than those of the Athenian vases, intermingled with chimeras and other monsters; the backgrounds variegated with flowers—the whole derived from oriental art. Gradually human figures, with all the characteristics of archaic Greek art, were introduced, with accompanying inscriptions. which cannot be later than the 6th or 5th c. B.C. The subjects of these vases were derived from the oldest Greek myths. The style of this pottery by degrees improved: the paste became pale red or salmon color; the human figures, which had been at first subordinate, replaced the friezes of animal and large ornaments. As the improvement went on, the backgrounds were made of a bright orange-red color, the figures of a deep black; while portions, as the hair, garments, and flesh of female figures, were-colored white. The style of art became much freer, although still retaining the rigidity of the rEginean school. Names of figures represented, of the artists who painted and the pot ters who made the wares, were added, with speeches, and the names of celebrated beauties and athletes of the day. In these styles the vases made on the wheel appear, while yet soft, to have had the subjects traced upon them with a finely-pointed tool; the figures were then filled in with a lucid black pigment of manganese, and then returned to the furnace. The details of the muscles and other portions were incised through the back with a sharp tool, so as to show the lighter background, and the purples, crimsons, blues, and other colors were laid on. The subjects are chiefly derived from the war of Troy and the heroic age; and the shapes in use were oil-jars (lecythai)water-pails(hydria!), wine-vases (crateecs), wine-jugs (regochoce), and amphora. They seemed to have con tinued in use till about 450 or 420 B. C., when the red figures were substituted for black, by tracing, as before, the figures on the clay, then running round them a thick line of flock, and finally filling up the background entirely with a black color—the muscles and inner marking not tieing incised, but traced in black and brown outlines. The earlier vases of this class, which are of the strong style, resemble those of the black figures; but the style gradually improved, and resembled the art of Phidias and Zeuxis; while the letters are those in use after the archonship of Euclid, 403 B.C. The style and form of these vases altered according to the art of the period, till the ultimate disuse of fictile or painted ware, about 300 B.C., when the conquests of Alexander the great and the in crease of luxury caused it to be superseded by vases in metals. In its last stage, the pottery became molded, and was glazed entirely black, or else variegated with opaque white figures and ornaments. The subjects of these later vases differ considerably from the earlier, chiefly derived from the theater or myths of the later poets. Vases of
this description are found in Greece, the isles of the Archipelago, and Italy; into which latter country they appear to have been imported from Greece.
In Italy, indeed, the Etruscans, at an early period, and perhaps some of the principal cities in Magna Grtecia. manufactured their own pottery. That of the Etruscans Con sists principally of three kinds—an unglazed red ware; a lustrous brown ware, made also by the neighboring Sabines and Oscans; and a black ware, the paste or substance of which is black throughout, not superficial, as among the Greeks, and made by mixing some coloring material with the chip. The Etruscan pottery is rarely painted—the black ware never—but it is distinguished by having ornaments in salient and bas-relief modeled or molded on it, and by the shapes of the vases apparently being derived from works in metal, and reproducing the fantastic combinations of oriental art. This ware, which was in use from 500 to 320 B.C., was the source from which subsequently arose the Aretine and Roman pottery. It was ornamented sometimes with incised ornaments; the subjects, however, are generally uninteresting, and it never attained a high position in art. The Etruscans, however, in later times imitated the painted vases of Greece, but their clay is much paler, the drawing coarser, and the shapes less elegant. In terra cotta statues they particularly excelled, and supplied the Romans with the figures of their divinities. Even sarcophagi were made of this material.
On the decline of the pottery of the Greeks and Etruscans, a new kind of ware was made at Arezzo, or Arretium, to which has been given the name of Aretine, and which resembled the later ware of the Greeks. It is evidently imitated from works in metal. in all probability from the chased cups of silver and gold which began to come into use in Italy, and was a continuation of the later molded wares of Greece and Italy. The vases were of a bright red or black color; the paste uniform in color throughout, but covered with a lustrous siliceous glaze. The red color nearly resembles in color and tex ture a coarse sealing-wax; the paste is often remarkably fine. The vases, generally of small dimension, were turned on the lathe; the ornaments were molded separately, and attached to the vase: patterns were produced by the repetition of the same mold, or by placing bas-reliefs from various molds on the vases. This kind of pottery was first made. at Arezzo, but subsequently, or nearly simultaneously, was produced at Capua and Cunue in the 1st c. A.D. It afterward extended over all the Roman world, and watt made in Gaul and Germany. It was called Samian ware under the republic, and was at first extremely fine, but deteriorated under the last of the twelve Caesars, and is no longer found under the Antonines; a red ware, glazed with red-lead and copper, having been substituted for it. The names of several hundred potters are found stamped upon extant specimens of this ware, and some of them are evidently of Gaulish or British ori gin. These names are followed by F., fedi, or made; maim, or by the hand of; and OF., offleina, or establishment. The ware was extensively imported into Britain and the remoter provinces of the empire; and wherever found, shows the influences of Roman civilization. Furnaces for it have been found in France and Germany, but not in Eng land. The other kinds of Roman ware were local, evidently made upon the spots where found, but with inferior ornamentation. Black-ware seems to have succeeded this, and to have been produced by confining the smoke of the furnace, and throwing it down upon the heated ware. In Britain varieties of this ware were made at Castor, in North amptonshire, ornamented with bas-relief, laid on by the process of depositing a fluid clay on the wet ware, and molding it with a tool. The style of art is Gaulish. Other vases of glazed ware were manufactured at Upchurch, near Rochester, and at Crockhill in the New Forest. They have only a few ornaments, either stamped or painted in a white pipeclay on the surface. These vases are probably as late as the 3d C. A.D. Later arose a black-ware, generally bottles or jugs, glazed externally, and with single words, invitations to drink, painted on them, iu a white pipe-clay. Many varieties of unglazed ware, red, yellow, white and gray, were extant in the 2d and 3d centuries. The large culinary and other vessels were made of these—such as casks '(dolia), amphone, jugs (legend), and mortars (mortaria)—the last at Lyons. The Romans made great use of brickwork terra cotta. All over the empire bricks were made for public and private buildings, and stamped at Rome with the name of the proprietors of the land, the pot ters, and the consulate of the period, till the middle of the 3d c. A.D. Bricks were also extensively manufactured by the legionaries, and bear their names and titles. The graves of the soldiery were often constructed of them. At Rome, the last inscribed bricks are those of Theodoric; none so late have been found in Britain or Gaul. Tiles, cornices, roof ornaments, and gutters were formed of terra cotta; so were the votive fig ures offered to the gods; but they all disappeared at the invasion of the northern barba rians, although they continued till then to be manufactured by local potteries.