hat the figures are painted in the ordinary
black-figure method, the only additional colour being purple laid on
the black. We first find polychrome decoration, whether in wash or
outline, in a small class of fragments from Naucratis, of the 6th
century B.C., which technically are of a very advanced character. The
colours used either for outline or wash include purple, brown, yellow,
crimson and rose-colour, but some, if not all, of these colours were
not fired.

In the 5th century this practice was revived at Athens, chiefly in the
class of _lekythoi_ or oil-flasks devoted exclusively to sepulchral
uses. Here the vases, after leaving the wheel and being fitted with
handles, &c., were covered with a coating of white clay. A second
coating of black was applied to the parts not required for decoration,
and the white was then finely polished, acquiring a dull gloss, and
finally fired at a low temperature. The decoration was achieved as
follows: a preliminary sketch was made with fine grey lines, ignoring
draperies, &c., and not always followed when the colours were laid on.
This was done when the first lines were dry, the colour being applied
with a fine brush in monochrome--black, yellow or red--following the
lines of the sketch. For the drapery and other details polychrome
washes were employed, laid on with a large brush. All varieties of red
from rose to brown are found, also violet, yellow, blue, black and
green. Hair is treated either in outline or by means of washes.

Finally, we have to deal with the class of vases (3 (b)) in which
opaque pigments are laid over the surface of the shining black with
which the whole vase is coated. This method is met with at three
distinct periods in the history of vase-painting, separated by long
distances of time.

We first find it in the earlier Cretan or Kamares ware, where it seems
to have been introduced not long after the close of the Neolithic
period, about 2500 B.C., and where it holds its own for about a
thousand years against the contrasted method of "dark on light"
painting, till it was finally ousted by the latter at the height of
"Mycenaean" civilization in Crete. The colouring is very varied,
orange, brown, pink and white being the principal tints employed.

The process appears again at the end of the 5th century in a small
class of Attic vases, which have been regarded as a sort of transition