Shape follows use
A Greek kitchen and dining room worked much like ours: you don’t drink from a jug or store oil in a cup. Athenian painted vases were made in specific shapes for specific daily uses, storing and transporting wine and food, drawing water, drinking, and for special, often ritual occasions such as pouring libations or carrying water for a bride’s bath. The names we use are mostly the ancient Greek ones, and many describe the job.
Here are the main shapes, grouped by what they did:
- Amphora (from amphi, on both sides, and phero, to carry): a jar with two handles for storing and transporting wine, oil and food.
- Hydria (from hydor, water): a water jar with three handles, two at the sides for lifting and one at the back for pouring.
- Krater (from kerannymi, to mix): a wide bowl for mixing wine and water.
- Oinochoe (from oinos, wine, and cheo, to pour): a jug for serving.
- Kylix, kantharos and skyphos: drinking cups, the first wide and shallow on a stem, the second with two high handles, the third deep.
- Lekythos: a slim flask for oil, used in libations and at the grave.
- Loutrophoros (from loutron, bath, and phero, to carry): a tall vessel that carried water for the bridal bath.
- Pyxis: a round box with a lid.
Storing and carrying: amphora and hydria
The amphora was the all-purpose container of the Greek world. Painted amphorae were the luxury version, and some were prizes: the winners of the games at the Panathenaic festival in Athens received amphorae filled with olive oil from Athena’s sacred groves, about 40 litres each, with the goddess on one side and the contest on the other.
The hydria is the easiest shape to recognise because of its three handles. You lifted it by the two side handles to carry it from the fountain, then tipped it by the vertical one at the back to pour. A hydria by the Orpheus Painter in the Metropolitan Museum (about 430 BCE) is 42.5 cm high, about the size of a full watering can.
At the symposium: krater, jug and cup
A whole family of vases belonged to the symposium, the drinking party held in the men’s dining room, the andron, in the dining room of a house. Wine was drunk mixed with water. In a large krater set in the middle of the room, the master of ceremonies decided how strong the mix would be, usually three or four parts water to one part wine. Slave boys filled jugs from the krater and poured the drink into each guest’s cup.
The cups came in several shapes. The kylix is wide and shallow, and some painters specialised in it: Douris, for one, decorated many cups in the early fifth century BCE. By the late sixth century there was an established set of symposium vessels: wine coolers, jugs, cups and mixing bowls, many painted with drinking parties or with Dionysos and his followers.
Oil, weddings and graves
The lekythos is the vase of rituals. Small ones held olive oil, and the Amasis Painter decorated a pair of them, about 17 cm high, with a wedding procession and with women weaving, perhaps as a gift for a bride. In the fifth century a taller version with a pale ground, the white-ground lekythos, was made for the grave: a lekythos by the Achilles Painter (about 440 BCE) shows a woman and a youth taking leave of each other.
The loutrophoros carried water for the bath a bride took before her wedding, and it also had a place in funerals: the Metropolitan Museum has a marble loutrophoros of the fourth century BCE, 74.9 cm high, made as a funerary monument. The pyxis, finally, is a lidded box; a Geometric one in the Met even has a lid handle shaped like a tiny pyxis.
Read the shape before the picture
Often the picture matches the use. Prize amphorae show the goddess and the contest, symposium vessels show drinking parties and Dionysos, funerary lekythoi show farewells. So in a museum, look at the shape first: it tells you whether the vase stood in a storeroom, on a party table or on a grave, and the picture will make more sense. If you want to know how they were made, from the wheel to the three-stage firing, that is another story.
Where to see them
Every museum with a Greek collection has these shapes. The Metropolitan Museum in New York shows all the examples above in its Greek galleries. Check gallery openings before you go.
Sources
- The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Department of Greek and Roman Art, “Athenian Vase Painting: Black- and Red-Figure Techniques” (2002) and “The Symposium in Ancient Greece” (2002), Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History.
- The Metropolitan Museum of Art, collection records 17.230.15, 06.1021.152, 23.160.54, 14.130.12, 08.258.18, 1975.284, 31.11.10, 56.11.1, 48.11.5a,b.
