Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

This is a collection of essays by distinguished scholars that will introduce the student or museum-goer to the study of Greek vases. Although the book is roughly chronological in arrangement--beginning with the appearance of human figures on Geometric vases, and ending with their virtual disappearance from Hellenistic pottery--it is not a history of Greek vase painting, or a handbook. It offers instead a series of suggestions on how to read the often complex images presented by Greek vases, and also explains how the vases were made and distributed. The volume is fully illustrated throughout.

Table of contents provided by Syndetics

• Frontispiece
• Preface
• Map
• 1 Adopting an approach
• 2 The geometric style: birth of the picture
• 3 Corinth and the orientalising phenomenon
• 4 The sixth-century potters and painters of Athens and their public
• 5 Vase-painting in fifth-century
• 6 Greek vases in Etruria
• 7 Farce and tragedy in South Italian vase-painting
• 8 Fine wares in the Hellenistic world
• 9 Greek vases in the marketplace
• 10 A closer look at the potter
• Greek vase shapes
• Further reading and notes
• List of illustrations
• Index

Reviews provided by Syndetics

CHOICE Review

The excellent, cogently written and illustrated original essays in this book have been contributed by leading scholars of ancient Greek pottery. The volume serves as an introduction for the beginner as well as a sophisticated, timely discussion of Greek vases and their history, their ancient reception, and modern study. The pots are viewed as objects of art and/or craft, their ancient uses described, and their pictorial and plastic design analyzed, all without losing sight of the vases as products of a highly organized industry. Several authors establish the basis for locating the vases in time and place, and they illustrate the relationship between master potter and the painter in his employ, while revealing the market's role in shaping the vases' distribution throughout the ancient world. The essays provide a brief, but incisive history of Greek vase-painting from its inception in the ninth century to its demise in the Hellenistic age, set in the context of the changing objectives of scholarship. Beginning with an interest in attributing and dating the vases and explaining their pictorial subjects, scholarly attention has shifted toward the establishment of the pictorial representation's meaning to the vessel's user, including the Etruscans who buried thousands of Greek vases in their tombs. For a fresh look at Greek vases, this book is ideal.