When the drawings were finished, his chief task was done; but his position as manufacturer did not permit him to remain indifferent to the rest. He had to carry his painted pottery to the drying place, and, after the required time, to have it baked. This is a very delicate part of the manufacture of vases, on which its success greatly depends. Ancient ovens were probably very imperfect. There are many examples of oxidization by contact with the flame, which improperly reddens the side of a vase or turns half a figure orange. The supports on which vases were placed, while drying, sometimes left round marks. In one known instance, in consequence of two freshly painted vases touching one another, the hoofs of a horse have become impressed upon the face of a youth. Defects in the material were more liable then than now to expose the ceramist to breakage and various accidents, which at all times have been the despair of the manufacturer, and which an Homeric singer already ascribed to special demons, “Syntrips, Smaragos, Asbetos, Sabaktes, Omodamos, gods fatal to the furnace.” We have already described a kiln adorned with a head of Silenus, a prophylactic fetish, destined to cast out evil influences (Fig. 4). At last the pottery is taken out of the oven. The master can contemplate his work, test the delicacy of its sides, examine the fusion of the colours, study the change of tone in the baking. Other workmen come to immerse the vases in a prepared bath, which will glaze the entire visible surface, brighten the red of the clay, the background and all the black lines, but will leave the retouching dull. We are quite ignorant of the ingredients of the bath which so thoroughly accomplished all this and gave the pottery its splendour. We only know that a red precipitate was formed, traces of which are frequently visible under the foot and upon the clay which had remained uncovered. Among vases of the decline, this red overruns the entire drawing and gives an unpleasant appearance to the whole; in this case, as with the black, either the recipe of the glaze had been lost, or else the work was badly executed. Possibly a dry rubbing with leather or some other substance added finish to the glaze.