A major source of evidence for ancient Greece is painted pottery. The two most popular decorative styles of ancient Greek pots are听black-figure听vase painting, practiced primarily听in the 6th centuries B.C.E., and听red-figure vase painting, developed from the late听6th through 4th centuries B.C.E. Despite the names for these styles, decoration听was largely created not with paint, but with a material called slip, a liquid mixture of clay and water (1).听Slip was an integral component of and decoration (1).
In ancient Greece, slip seems to have been about 20 percent clay and 80 percent water. It is more accurately referred to as levigated slip because the coarser particles in the clay were听removed by the process of levigation. Ancient Greeks may also have used potash to deflocculate their slip, a process that allows clay particles to remain suspended by prohibiting them from adhering to one another.听
Slip functioned in a variety of ways in ancient Greek vase construction and decoration. Slip was, for example, used as an adhesive听for attaching appendages to the body of a vessel. Likewise, it was applied听as decoration to the surface of a vessel while it was听leather-hard听and before听it was fired in a pottery kiln. When it is used as decoration, slip is applied like paint, that is, with a brush or similar tool. Unlike paint, however, slip has the advantage of bonding with the surface of the clay vessel and, for this reason, it is more durable than paint.听
The black-figure and red-figure techniques of ancient Greek vase painting were achieved using slip, not paint. The familiar black color of ancient Greek slip resulted from the natural presence of iron oxide in the clay, which听. Other colors could be achieved by adding various materials to the slip mixture. White, for example, was created by using a pure primary clay, one that had few or no iron oxides. Red slip was created by the addition of red ochre to the slip mixture, while brown was produced by using a more diluted solution of the standard black slip (2). Ancient Greek vase painters used slip to its full extent to create lively scenes and decorative elements on the surfaces of vases.听
This essay was written to accompany a听collection of Greek artifacts at the CU Art Museum.听
Footnotes
- Toby Schreiber,听Athenian Vase Construction: A Potter's Analysis听(Malibu: The J. Paul Getty Museum, 1999): 28.听
- J.V. Noble, "An Overview of the Technology of Greek and Related Pottery" in ed. H. A. G. Brijdger, Ancient Greek and Related Pottery: Proceedings of the International Vase Symposium in Amsterdam, 12 -15 April 1984听(Amsterdam: Allard Pierson Museum, 1984): 34; Schreiber,听Athenian Vase Construction: 53-6.