History of Ancient Pottery: Greek, Etruscan, and Roman. Volume 1 (of 2)Walters, H. B. (Henry Beauchamp)
History
History of Ancient Pottery: Greek, Etruscan, and Roman. Volume 1 (of 2)
Walters, H. B. (Henry Beauchamp)
Mythology, Classical, in art; Pottery, Ancient; Pottery, Etruscan; Pottery, Greek; Pottery, Roman
A peculiar kind of modelling was used for the gilded portions of
reliefs, introduced over the black varnish. When the vase was baked a
fine clay was applied to the parts intended for gilding and delicately
modelled, either with a small tool or a brush, a process similar to
that adopted in the Roman red ware (_en barbotine_, see Chapter XXI.).
It may indeed have been squeezed in a fluid state through a tube upon
the vase, and then modelled. As the gilded-portions are generally
small, this process was not difficult or important. A vase discovered
at Cumae[770] has two friezes executed in this style, the upper round
the neck, representing the Eleusinian deities, delicately modelled,
coloured, and with the flesh completely gilded; the lower one consists
of a band of animals and arabesque ornaments. Several vases from the
same locality, from Capua and from the Cyrenaica, have wreaths of corn,
ivy, or myrtle, and necklaces round the neck, modelled in the same
style, while the rest is plain.
But the art of modelling was soon extensively superseded by that of
_moulding_, or producing several impressions from a mould, generally
itself of terracotta. The subject was in the first place modelled in
relief with considerable care; and from this model a cast in clay was
taken and then baked. The potter availed himself of moulds for various
purposes. From them he produced entire parts of his vase in full
relief, such as the handles, and possibly in some instances the feet.
He also stamped out certain ornaments in relief, much in the same
manner as the ornaments of cakes are prepared, and fixed them while
moist to the still damp body of the vase. Such ornaments were
principally placed upon the lips or at the base of the handles, and in
the interior of the _kylikes_ or cups of a late style. A late bowl of
black glazed ware in the British Museum (see Plate XLVIII.) contains an
impression from one of the later Syracusan decadrachms having for its
subject the head of Persephone surrounded by dolphins: it was struck
about 370 B.C. by Euainetos.[771]
The last method to be described is that of producing the entire vase
from a mould by stamping it out, a process extensively adopted in Roman
pottery. During the best period of the fictile art, while painting
flourished, such vases were very rare; but on the introduction of a
taste for magnificent vases of chased metal, the potters endeavoured to
meet the public taste by imitating the reliefs of metal ware.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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