The first attempts to use natural clay date back to the Neolithic when the primitives started to make vessels, mixed and shaped by hands, dried under the sun or with the heat of the fire.
These were simple objects intended for domestic use, rather imperfect and unevenly fired.
Sometimes they have decorations made with different techniques: incision, impression, with plates, or basic expression of paintings inspired by the vegetal and animal world.
Among the Greeks, the manufacturing of pottery was a real art expression.
Mainly in attic ceramic there were two main techniques:
1) black figures (with drawings painted in black on the typical reddish background of the fired clay)
2) red figures (with drawings scratched on vessel which has been burned and covered in black paint).
The black figures technique is the oldest and it was employed between 630 and 500 BC; the red figures techniques rose and spread at the end of the 6th Century.
The decorations usually displayed mythological characters, gods, tales from the war of Troy or sport-related scenes, showing athletes practising different games.
Etruscan ceramic was born around the half of the 8th century B.C., when the Etruscans met the Greeks. The production consisted in unrefined clay and handmade vessels, approximately fired.
The most famous category of Etrurian objects is the bùccheri, which comes from the Castilian word bùcaro, used to define some vessels from South America which reached Europe the same time of the first findings in Etruscan Archaeological sites. Bùccheri were ceramic creations made of a completely black dough with smooth surface, slim thickness, and decorated with graffiti, made from the 8th century B.C. In the period between 6th and 4th century B.C. it was used the word bùccheri pesanti, which were thicker artifacts made with black dough with smooth surface and decorated with special stamps.
Among the Romans there were skilled artisans, specialized in the so-called “terra sigillata”, a wide range of fine vessels used to eat. The Latin word sigillatus comes from sigillum (“small figure”) and it meant “embossed”, “decorated with figures in relief”. This kind of production flourished particularly in the whole roman world, from the old republican age to the old imperial age. Products made of “terra sigillata” were covered in a bright red paint. The most common objects were: plates, canteen vessels, potòri vessels (used to drink), mugs, cups, glasses, and pitchers with different edges, handles and feet.
Decorations included vegetal and ornamental frames, special subject like satyrs of dancers, mythological episodes, historical events, or erotic scenes.
From the first half of the 1st century AD there was a production crisis, characterized by more low-quality raw materials and by the impoverishment of shapes and decorations. The crisis was due to the widespread of potòri vessels made of metal and glass, materials which do not change the organoleptic characteristics of wine and other liquids, and which become an alternative to the production of ceramics when the glass blowing process was invented.
