Tsuntas, Chrestos: The Mycenaean age: a study of the monuments and culture of pre-homeric Greece (London, 1897)

SOME PHASES OF MYCENAEAN ART

233

plates of tin as thin as paper, which form a striking con-
trast with the black ground of the vessel. These thin
plates are also ornamented with impressed lines, which,
after the plates were fixed, were engraved or indented with
a blunt style. By means of this additional work, the tin,
which apparently was simply pressed into the earthenware

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Fig. 116. Earthen Vessel inlaid with Tin-Foil (Wangen)

while yet soft, was made to adhere more closely to the
clay." A second example from "Wangen, on Lake Con-
stance (Fig. 116), exhibits a somewhat different treatment
analogous to the " graffito " method in fresco painting;
instead of laying on the ornaments in strips and plates, a
" sheet of tin-foil was laid on the black ground, and the
parts required to be black were scraped off by a point or a
knife." On this black ground the decorations often stand
out with great vividness.1

Now we know that the Mycenaeans, at the height of
their civilization, continued to cover bone buttons with gold-
leaf precisely as these Swiss lake-dwellers inlaid their
1 lUd., pp. 230, 291.