Archaeological Museum of Bologna

Around 530 BC Athenian potters invented a “revolutionary” decorative technique that gave the city a virtual monopoly on the Mediterranean ceramic market: the red-figure style.
As opposed to the older black-figure technique, in which the figures were completely filled in with a slip and the internal details were incised, with the red-figure technique the vase painter merely outlined the figures and then painted the entire ground, leaving various elements of the depiction in the base colour of the clay. The craftsman thus had greater freedom in defining anatomical details and rendering the garments and facial features, which could be done with black lines that varied in thickness and by applying thinner or denser paint.

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The Attic pottery was mainly intended to be used during the symposium, an important moment of collective life in which the consumption of wine, which took aspects of both convivial rituals that were associated with music, dance, poetry.

The high socio-cultural degreeassumed by symposium led  an extreme specialization in the use of the vessels, which took forms closely related to their particular function. The jars for the wine were not simply objects or accessories of the table; the products of the Attic potters, with rich depictions, became formidable vehicles of images and cultural transmission.

In large containers, such as amphoras and pelikai, the wine was stored and transported; reserved for the use of the water was the hydria, vase with vertical loop useful to dispense the contents. The wine was never consumed pure, but mixed with water in a large container, the krater, the central element in the service and banquet to whom was given special attention, even in the creation of figurative decoration.

The beverage thus obtained was then offered to the guests in cups of various shapes: kylikes, kantharoi and skyphoi; to tap and pour ladles were used (kyathoi) and pitchers (oinochoai and choes).