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But the art of modelling was soon extensively superseded by that of _moulding_, or producing several impressions from a mould, generally itself of terracotta.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.

The most remarkable of these moulded vases are the _rhyta_ or drinking-horns, the bodies of which terminate in the heads of animals, produced from a mould (see above, p. 192). By the same process were also made vases in the form of jugs or lekythi, the bodies of which are moulded in the shape of human heads, and sometimes glazed, while the necks were fashioned on the lathe, and the handles added. These were coloured and ornamented on the same principle as the rhyta, the vase-portion being generally covered with a black glaze, but sometimes with a white slip, after the manner of the terracottas. Besides the rhyta, _phialae_, or saucers, were also moulded; fine examples of which process may be seen on the flat bossed saucers, or _phialae mesomphaloi_, discussed in