V. Shops and Shapes

Abstract

Admiration for the quality and appearance of Greek pottery, and interest in the subject matter of the figured scenes, have until recently tended to draw attention away from other aspects of the study. In reaction to what is seen as an overemphasis on attribution, both of painters and of potters, one approach which has been adopted is to consider the organization of the shops which produced the pottery, to see the pottery in its sociological context. Talk of ‘pupils’, ‘masters’, ‘influence’ etc. presupposes that we know the arrangements under which the potters and painters worked, but hard facts are few.There is evidence from excavated kilns, but the workshops which lay nearby and their spatial organization are less well known. The Potters’ Quarter at Corinth gives a better idea than other sites of this aspect, but there are no kilns there, and we do not know how typical the Potters’ Quarter was - there were other areas of production at Corinth.