Gardner, Percy: The principles of Greek art (London, 1924)

CHAPTER XIV

vases: space, balance, perspective

A Greek Vase as a Whole. — The form, the decoration, the
designs, all go together, and are all worked out in relation one
to the other. The form requires a certain arrangement of the
linear decoration, the decoration suggests the form of the sub-
jects to be drawn on the vase. And all these elements of the
vase not only bear simple relations one to the other, but are in
themselves simple.

But the vase which is a whole is made up of parts, each of
which has a purpose in subordination to the purpose of the
whole. The mouth in the oenochoe is ma'de in trefoil shape
for pouring, in an amphora wide to admit the ladle, in the
crater wider still. The lekythos has but one handle, as it is
used for oil, the amphora two, that it may be lifted with two
hands, the hydria three, two for the lifting of the vessel and
one whereby it may be held in place on the shoulder. The
breadth of the foot is carefully proportioned to the diameter
of the vase, so as to secure a reasonable stability. Handles,
foot and neck, it may be added, were usually made apart,
and joined on to the trunk of the vase when shaped, but of
course before baking.

Some of the strict rational laws of decoration which we found
to be potent in architecture hold in the case of vases also. Here
also the parts which bear the most strain are the least adorned,
and such decoration as they bear follows the line of strain. The
handles, liable to constant friction, are usually not decorated;
the neck, if long, is sometimes adorned in linear fashion, as is a
column with flutings. In black-figured vases there is a circle

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