Pottery
Potters and pot-painters operated at a humbler level than sculptors and architects, who would usually work to commission, and often used costly imported materials (clay being available in most regions of Greece). Often potter and vase- or pot-painter would be the same. Sometimes they would sign their work - perhaps simply taking pride in it, but more likely as a form of advertisement, all the more necessary in a competitive commercial environment. Indeed, there are many signs that potters and vase-painters attempted to outdo each other. it is perhaps in the potter and vase-painter that we are closest to the artist as an ordinary individual, through inscriptions - many of them referring to the potters and painters themselves - and through depictions of potters at work.
Pottery workshops seem to have consisted of extended families and the scenes they represented often reflected the everyday concerns of ordinary people. They show rituals and rites, but also watercollecting, drinking, dancing, athletics, marriages, death and other daily activities. By comparing signed works, we can deduce the characteristics of each vase-painter's style, and attribute unsigned vases. The method was pioneered by Sir John Beazley (1885-1970), who studied vases of the lowest, as well as the highest, quality.