Ceramics 1
11 January 2013
Ancient Greece Style Of Pottery The orientalizing style is an example of creative cultural interaction. This style was the product of cultural ferment in the Aegean and Eastern Mediterranean of the 8th and 7th centuries BC. During this period, the Assyrians advanced along the Mediterranean coast, accompanied by Greek mercenaries. Phoenicians settled in Cyprus and in western regions of Greece, while Greeks established trading colonies at Al Mina, Syria, and in Ischia off the Tyrrhenian coast of Italy. Eastern influences revitalized Greek art by introducing new materials, and techniques. Greek myths explained the origins of the gods and their individual relations with mankind. The art of Classical Greece illustrates many mythological episodes, including an established iconography of attributes that identify each god. Most Greek pottery was shaped for a particular function or a number of functions. They were used around the house, or for ceremonies, or even entertainment,For example in weedings,banquets,processions. The earliest evidence comes from Crete, where metalsmiths had adopted eastern techniques. Bronze bowls with embossed lions or winged creatures and gold ornaments decorated in granulation or filigree suggest the early establishment of an Orientalizing tradition. The ‘Orientalizing movement’ took on a more systematic form from the end of the 8th c. BC. In Corinth, Athens, Crete and East Greece, potters abandoned the Geometric style and started decorating vases with schematic floral motifs and mythological creatures of Assyrian or Egyptian origin, as well as with exotic animals unfamiliar in the Greek landscape. Working with this style, Corinthian potters would eventually invent an original decorative technique, which is known today as black-figure. In plastic arts, it was