Page:History of Art in Persia.djvu/496

 472 History of Art in Antiquity. Lemaire, who obligingly allowed our draughtsman to make copies of them.* The oldest specimens in this pottery appear to be vases of black ware with very thick walls, perhaps hanel-made. Some are quite plain (Fig. 2^2, 243. on liie right) ; others are adorned by lines rudely incised on the soft clay (Fig. 244), making up vertical bands which divide the body of the vase into a number of com- partments, filled in by other ecjually rude lines in the shape of triangles; The forms, though heavy, are both solid and commodious. A step in advance was made in the red ware specimen (Fig. 245) ; for though equally plain and rude, it exhibits thinner walls. A still greater progress is observable in several vases of red or pale yellow clay, orna- mented by geometrical de- signs traced with some brown pigment dull in tone and of varying depth. The form of the vase (Fig. 246) is still clumsy enough, yet there is real and steady im- provement, greater richness of design, in every speci- men as we advance. The princi})Ie of the decoration consists of the division of the body of the vase into a certain number of fields, where blank spaces are opposed to ornamented ones, obtained now by straight ^ The vases in questioa have been acquired by the Louvre. Fig. 244.— Block cl.n> vaM:. Height, 95 c. Richard CollectuMt. FlO. 245.— Rc l earthen vase. He^h% J C. Richard CullectioD. Digitized by Google