Abstract/Summary

In this chapter, we argue rather that ancient Athenian viewer-users perceived the technical and artistic complexity even of crudely painted pots, that is, ceramic surfaces that artisans decorated with quick handiwork but without attention to detail, refinement, and completeness. We recognise that traces of production are easier to identify than wear and tear, which is difficult to ascertain for glazed ceramic surfaces. Crudely painted pots, especially when handled and observed closely, solicit admiration and also creative thinking about their artisans. These pots communicate clearly ideas about materials (clays) and about techniques and efficiencies in potting and decoration. We consider decoration as a technical choice, and not only informative about pictorial narrative and meaning (or symbolism). Both potters and painters were conscious of their craft and for that reason left traces of their craft and techniques on their pots. Crudeness exposed the possibilities and limits of materials (clays) and of technical steps in throwing and decorating. More broadly, crudeness signalled the modus operandi of the vase industry. With case studies of two ancient pots—an Athenian cup-skyphos and a Boeotian kylix—we draw on theories of affordances and phenomenology to argue for the playful effects, emotional and otherwise, of ceramic surfaces enjoyed by both makers and users of ancient Greece’s crudely painted wares. Like these ancient people who were working with nature and its materials, we consider direct observation and sensorial experience, which are central to phenomenology. Both of our chosen vases were decorated in the black-figure style, in the early fifth century BCE, well after Athens’ ‘best’ artists had turned their attention to the red-figure style.