ng the Bronze Age. Vases were covered with the "varnish" of its time then painted on with a white color in patters, or the vases were left clay colored and painted with a single band of "varnish". This style would later resurface and become known as the Mycenean technique.
Early Minoan Clay Vessles
Middle Minoan pottery showed the techniques of a more developed Bronze Age culture. The clay is clensed and pure, the "varnish" is completely developed, and shades of red begin to appear in pottery. "A transition leads to the brilliant period of the Kamares style, named after the first discoveries in the Kamares cave on Mt. Ida." (Buschor, 8). The Kamares style, polychromy is fully developed and decoration is very diverse. The pottery itself becomes even more developed, copying the styles of metal work. Cups, beaked jugs, beaked saucers, and amphorae with handles become common place. Along with the usual geometric patterns of the time, plant motifs such as vegetables, leaves, branches, and tendrils, appear on pottery.
Kamares Style Pouring Vessle
At the end of the Middle Minoan era the Kamares style has been relegated to background and a new style stealing from wall paintings of this period was developed. This new style delt mainly with vivid representation of human and animal figures in dark colors on light colored clay.
Octopus Jar from Late Minoan Period
This trend of naturalism is extreamly short lived however. The return to the formulated decorative patterns and stylized plant forms returns and is the basis for future styles. The second Late Minoan period gave birth to the Palace style. While the neck and foot of the vases of this style were neglected, the shoulders of the pottery were often emphasized with half branches. The Kamares technique of placing red, white, and orange on a background was replaced with the Mycenean technique of black on the natural clay.
During the Late Helladic III period, pottery abandoned the Middle Helladic tradition and assimilated the foreign influences thus creating a pure Mycenaean tradition. The free drawing composition gave way to order and symmetry. The quality of pottery was considerably improved and production became massive. The vases of this period were influenced by the themes of the frescoes. Illustrations of animals, birds and human figures or even iconographic scenes of a narrative character appear for the first time on pottery. These elements and the more general decorative trends of that period present a uniformity on a large part of the Mycenaean territory Clear peculiarities in the local workshops, which express the dissolution of the previous centralized trends are distinguished from the Late Helladic III C period. Ceramic which comes from sites where ceramic kilns have been discovered facilitate the distinction of the regional differences. The next and last phase of the Submycenaean period reveal clearly the signs of decline which are expressed in the simplification of the decoration and the inartistic manufacture of ceramics.
The third Late Minoan period is seen as a step backwards in terms of pottery. Most examples are considered inferrior to the earlier palace style vessles. The last showing of naturalistic decoration that was common at the end of the Middle Minoan period appears in a lifeless and poor representation. Overall decoration was fairly loose and appeared around the shoulders of the vases with bands around the lower parts of the vase.
In contrast, Late Mycenean vases exhibited a large array of figure representation. The two classes of figure vases were animal representation and battle field and other compositions taken from wall paintings. " The best-known example is the Warrior vase from the Mycenae representing the departure for the battlefield." (Buschor, 15)
Warrior vase from Mycenae
"Apart from these figured representations, one may say that Cretan vase-painting, after its brilliant achievements in the Kamares, shaft graves, and Palace styles, sinks down to that primitive level from which it started: it becomes once more a geometric style." (Buschor, 15)