Black-figure Pottery - Production Techniques

Production Techniques

The foundation for pottery painting is the image carrier, in other words, the vase onto which an image is painted. Popular shapes alternated with passing fashions. Whereas many recurred after intervals, others were replaced over time. But they all had a common method of manufacture: after the vase was made, it was first dried before being painted. The workshops were under the control of the potters, who as owners of businesses had an elevated social position.

The extent to which potters and painters were identical is uncertain. It is likely that many master potters themselves made their main contribution in the production process as vase painters, while employing additional painters. It is, however, not easy to reconstruct links between potters and painters. In many cases, such as Tleson and the Tleson Painter, Amasis and the Amasis Painter or even Nikosthenes and Painter N, it is impossible to make unambiguous attributions, although in much of the scientific literature these painters and potters are assumed to be the same person. But such attributions can only be made with confidence if the signatures of potter and painter are at hand.

The painters, who were either slaves or craftsmen paid as pottery painters, worked on unfired. leather-dry vases. In the case of black-figure production, the subject was painted on the vase with a clay slurry (a glossy slip, in older literature also designated as varnish) which turned black after firing. This was not a "color" in the traditional sense, since this surface slip was of the same material as the vase itself, only differing in the size of the component particles. The area for the figures was first painted with a brush-like implement. The internal outlines and structural details were incised into the slip so that the underlying clay could be seen through the scratches. Two other earth-based pigments were used to add details—red and white for ornaments, clothing or parts of clothing, hair, animal manes, parts of weapons and other equipment. White was also frequently used to represent women’s skin.

The success of all this effort could only be judged after a complicated, three-phase firing process which generated the red color of the vase clay and the black of the applied slip. Specifically, the vessel was fired in a kiln at a temperature of about 800°C, with the resultant oxidization turning the vase a reddish-orange color. The temperature was then raised to about 950°C with the kiln's vents closed and green wood 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 color which had been created in the second stage.

Although scoring is one of the main stylistic indicators, some pieces do without. For these, the form is technically similar to the orientalizing style, but the image repertoire no longer reflects orientalizing practice.