Chapter I

.) that this branch of the study of Greek vases is one that has only been called into existence in comparatively recent times, and that up to the year 1854 or thereabouts all attempts at dating the vases (chiefly of course owing to the poverty of material) were purely empirical and tentative. They were moreover largely combined with fantastic interpretations of the painted designs.

During the last forty years, and especially during the last twenty, the steady growth of archaeological study and increased attention to excavations have enormously increased both the material at command and the power of utilising it with scientific method. The extensive finds of pottery in Greece, Asia Minor, Northern Africa, Italy, and elsewhere, including more especially products of the earlier periods, have enabled the students of the subject to trace the sequence of fabrics from the rude wares of Troy and the Greek Islands up to the graceful and finished products of the Athenian _ateliers_, and onward to the overgrown luxuriousness of the gigantic Apulian wares. The subjects of the paintings, once of all-absorbing, are now only of subordinate interest, except so far as they illustrate certain phases of development, and the chief interest of the vases is the question of their origin, their maker, or their place in relation to others.

It will therefore be the object of this and of the succeeding chapters to trace with all possible detail, as far as space permits, the history of Greek vase-manufacture and vase-painting in all their aspects. We have already indicated (p. 31) the limits within which the subject falls, and the convenient rough division into four main classes of which it permits (p. 23). This introductory chapter, therefore, deals with the primitive fabrics, leading up, through the two following, to the period of black-figured vases in