between the black-figured and red-figured. White and orange-red are
here employed, sometimes with accessory details in purple and black
and incised lines, so that the technique is virtually black-figured,
though the appearance of the vases is often red-figured. Lastly, it
appears in southern Italy as a final effort of vase-painting to
flicker into life again about the end of the 3rd century. Some of
these vases were made in Campania, where the method resembles that of
the Attic class just described, others in Apulia, probably at Gnathia.
The latter have feeble conventional decoration in purple and white
with details in yellow, confined to one side of the vases, and are
also distinguished by the use of ornaments in relief. They were also
occasionally made in Greece proper.

Remarkably few colours were used by the Greek vase painters,
especially in the best periods. The deep purple used for accessory
details was produced from iron oxide, but the red used for lines on
the white _lekythoi_ is an ochre ([Greek: miltos], _rubrica_). The
white also used for accessories is an earth or clay; in the slip
coating of the white ground vases it assumes the consistency of
pipe-clay. Yellow, where used for details on the later vases, is an
ochre, and blue and green are produced from artificial compounds
containing copper. A number of the colours, such as blue, rose and
green, used by the polychrome painters, are obviously artificial
pigments which have not been fired. When gilding was employed it was
laid on over a raised ground of clay finely modelled with a small tool
or brush, and was attached by varnish, not by fire.

_Potters and Inscriptions_.--The potters who made these vases were
mostly--at least at Athens in the 6th and 5th centuries, B.C.--[Greek:
metoikoi], or resident aliens, as their names in many cases imply. We
have an Amasis (an Egyptian name), a Brygus (a Scythian), a Lydus and
a Scythes. The dialect of many of the inscriptions on Attic vases
seems to show foreign influence, though in other cases peculiarities
may be merely due to the use of a vernacular. They formed a gild or
fraternity, and in each pottery there was probably more or less
division of labour, the more simple processes being the work of
slaves. This seems to be implied in the vase-paintings representing
the interior of potteries. Others again "specialized" in different
shapes, and